Kyrsten Sinema delivers Senate farewell speech stressing importance of maintaining norms

PHOENIX – U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona emphasized the importance of maintaining political norms during her farewell speech on the Senate floor Wednesday.

It has been an eventful six years for Sinema since her historic election in 2018. The Tucson native was state’s first female U.S. senator and the first Arizona Democrat elected to the office in 30 years.

However, she didn’t seek reelection in 2024 after abandoning the Democratic Party two years earlier. Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego will take over her seat after winning this year’s race.

Sinema often worked across party lines throughout her Senate tenure, at times becoming a lighting rod for criticism from both directions.

She took her pledge for bipartisanship to another level when she switched her registration to independent in December 2022.

Kyrsten Sinema revisits filibuster during farewell speech

One reason a rift developed between Sinema and Democrats was that she wouldn’t support their efforts to end the filibuster for the sake of passing party priorities such as voting rights reform.

She brought up the filibuster early and often during her farewell speech, when she focused on the importance of keeping political guardrails intact.

“In recent history, both parties have wrestled with the importance of norms and rules, and both parties have viewed these norms and rules as outdated, constraining or simply obstacles to their short-term victories,” Sinema said.

“Many now blame these guardrails for blocking critical progress instead of recognizing that it is us, our actions, our words, our incivility, and ultimately our unwillingness to compromise that prevent reasonable solutions from advancing.”

Sinema, a former state lawmaker who served southern Arizona in the U.S. House for three terms before moving to the Senate, said the government’s built-in system of checks and balances protects all Americans.

Just as she defended the filibuster when her party controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, she did so again with Republicans set to take full control of the executive and legislative branches.

“The political winds have now shifted. And yet the filibuster ensures .. that the tyranny of the majority does not overrule the rights of the minority, regardless of who sits in the seat of power,” she said.

Sinema was enthusiastically applauded by her colleagues after closing her 15-minute farewell speech by quoting the famous “better angels of our nature” passage from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the course of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

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