Across the country, Americans awoke on Friday to the shocking news that Kyrsten Sinema had been a Democrat.
In interviews from coast to coast, citizens expressed a combination of puzzlement and disbelief at the bombshell that the Arizona senator had had any sort of affiliation with the Democratic Party.
“I saw her on TV saying that she had been a Democrat, but maybe she misspoke?” Tracy Klugian, who lives in Miami, said. “Politicians mess up like that all the time.”
“I’m definitely going to have to Google ‘Kyrsten Sinema’ and ‘Democrat,’ ” Carol Foyler, a resident of St. Louis, said. “It seems like some kind of a hoax.”
“If it turns out that she actually was a Democrat, it must have been painful for her to keep it a secret for so many years,” Harland Dorrinson, who lives in Topeka, said.
For her part, Senator Sinema promised the residents of Arizona that her departure from the Democratic Party would be a net gain for them. “I swear to you today, I will be even more irritating as an Independent,” she vowed.
