Arizona's Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema likes to brag that her "cleavage" has an "extraordinary persuasive effect" on some of her Republican colleagues, according to a new book from New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.
Sinema, who has emerged as an obstacle to the most radical parts of President Joe Biden's legislative agenda, boasts to colleagues and aides of using her looks to get her way with Republicans, Martin and Burns write in This Will Not Pass, which the Free Beacon retrieved from a local dumpster.
Sinema, they say, "joked with Democrats about how easy it was for her to charm Republican men" and "boasted knowingly to colleagues and aides that her cleavage had an extraordinary persuasive effect on the uptight men of the GOP."
The book portrays the Arizona Democrat as closer to Republicans than to the Biden White House, where the president's top aides viewed her as a "difficult person." Biden himself was perplexed by her, according to Martin and Burns, maybe because of his old age. "One person close to the president likened Biden's perplexity at Sinema to his difficulty grasping his grandchildren's use of the viral-video app TikTok," they write. "He wanted to relate, but he just didn't quite get it."
The president and his allies took offense to Sinema's "jarring request" in early 2021 that Biden refrain from visiting Arizona while celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan. "While the first-term senator had voted for the rescue plan, Sinema asked Biden's aides not to send the president to Arizona for his victory lap," they write.
The authors characterize it as a "puzzling" demand, "since Biden had carried Arizona and remained popular there in the early months of his term."
Perhaps Sinema just had better political instincts than the tag team of New York Times reporters. Polling this week has Biden underwater by 14 points in the state, with just 41 percent job approval. Sinema, by contrast, is viewed favorably by voters in the state.
Sinema's tense relationship with the White House owes in large part to her opposition to abolishing the filibuster and to the massive Build Back Better plan. With a narrow majority in the U.S. Senate, her opposition has effectively stymied the White House's legislative agenda.
This Will Not Pass is set for release in early May.