A former member of the Democratic Party , Sinema became an independent in December Sinema served three terms as a state representative for the 15th legislative district from to , one term as the state senator for the 15th legislative district from to , and three terms as the United States representative for the 9th district from to She began her political career in the Arizona Green Party and rose to prominence for her progressive advocacy, supporting causes such as LGBT rights and opposing the war on terror.
After her election, she joined the New Democrat Coalition , the Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus , amassing one of the most conservative voting records in the Democratic caucus. Sinema was considered a key swing vote in the Senate during the th and th Congresses , when it was almost split between Democrats and Republicans.
Her parents divorced when she was a child, and her mother, who had custody of the children, remarried. Sinema has said that when her stepfather lost his job and the bank foreclosed on their home, the family lived for three years in an abandoned gas station [ 18 ] and that for two years they had no toilet or electricity while living there.
We separated our bunkbed from the kitchen with one of those big chalkboards on rollers. I knew that was weird. A chalkboard shouldn't be a wall. A kitchen should have running water. According to journalist Jonathan Martin in The New York Times , Sinema has given "contradictory answers about her early life", and her mother and stepfather have filed court documents saying they had made monthly payments for gas, electricity, and phone bills, even though Sinema had said they had been "without running water or electricity".
I know what I lived through. In , she earned a J. Carey School of Business. In , Sinema became an adjunct professor teaching master's-level policy and grant-writing classes at Arizona State University School of Social Work and an adjunct business law professor at Arizona Summit Law School , formerly known as Phoenix School of Law.
