Sinema’s new gig
Hang with Kyrsten for $250,000 … Howl at some lawmakers for free … And on balloons and babies.
Friday was Kyrsten Sinema’s last day as Arizona’s independent U.S. senator.
But she won’t be out of work for long.
Sinema — whose life after Congress has been the subject of countless think pieces and many hours of speculation on cable news — is getting ready to announce her next big gig, several politicos tell us.
She’s launching a business roundtable, modeled like a statewide version of Greater Phoenix Leadership, an organization of business leaders who work together on business and government initiatives.1
A “business roundtable” is something of a cross between a Rotary club for rich people and an organized effort to influence government in their favor. Sinema’s roundtable will be focused mostly on protecting Arizona business interests when it comes to taxes and tariffs, per sources in the know.
A seat at Sinema’s table costs a whopping $250,000.
A membership at Greater Phoenix Leadership, by comparison, is about one-tenth of that price.
The goal is to raise north of $5 million this year through the 20 seats, we hear.
The official effort has been very hush-hush so far. Her former Senate policy advisor, Austin Kennedy, is allegedly spearheading the project, which is currently staffing up, we hear.2
But the rumor mill is in full swing about it.
“I think she needs to pay her bills and she doesn’t have a campaign to do it anymore,” as one Republican put it.
Nobody has ever accused Sinema of being overly frugal with her donors’ money.3 And several politicos we spoke to suggested that could be a major hurdle to her fundraising.
But so far, it hasn’t seemed to hurt.
She has been aggressively courting donors, including — according to one source — by trashing Gov. Katie Hobbs as not being up to the task of representing business owners’ interests.
She’s even attempting to get the state universities to pony up and join, we hear.4
Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill is among the donors, per sources, along with at least a few others who have committed. Besides being the owner of the state football team and a major player in the business community, Bidwill is a big political donor — mostly for Republicans, though he has long been generous toward Sinema.
“I think they have hundreds of thousands raised, if not millions,” one Democrat privy to the efforts told us.
There’s also the question of what influence Sinema can wield for the quarter-million-dollar ante.
“(For that price) you get access to a former senator who is despised by everyone in power,” the Republican source said. “People are skeptical.”
Of course, she still has relationships in the Senate and knows how to pull the levers of government better than most.
But there’s a rule of thumb that many former politicians learn the hard way: Nobody cares what you think anymore.
Then again, as with so many aspects of her career, Sinema may be the exception to the rule.
If you’re considering donating to former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s new business roundtable, we’d like to remind you of a few of the more lavish purchases she made from her campaign account / travel slush fund.
Overseas travel: She spent $216,000 on travel from July to September last year, including $15,015 on trips to California and Colorado and $81,553 on international visits to the United Kingdom and France. She also spent $77,000 on a new Chevrolet “security detail vehicle.”
Luxury hotel stays: There’s almost too many to count. A few that caught our eye are $2,827 at the Castel de Très Girard, a luxurious hotel in France, and $2,207 at the Inhabit Queen’s Gardens Hotel in London, a four-star hotel with a “subterranean wellness centre.” The New York Edition, a hotel inside a clocktower in midtown Manhattan, got $15,538 of Sinema’s campaign funds.
Wining and dining: Sinema dropped $534 on dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Pantheon in Rome. The check for the Empire restaurant in Boston totaled $2,075. Visits to wineries like the Promontory Winery in Oakville, California, and Three Sticks in Sonoma cost $1,965.
Massage is back on the table: After the Arizona State Board of Massage Therapy suspended licensing on Tuesday, Gov. Katie Hobbs stepped in and told the board’s director to resume accepting applications, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports. The pause was due to the board switching to a new licensing system. But after nearly 400 complaints, Hobbs insisted they accept paper applications. It’s not just licensing applications and renewals, either. Employers can’t verify job applicants if the state website isn’t up and running.
Taking a bold step: Hours of watching video in an editing bay for AZFamily led former reporter Sam Mena to set his arm on fire during a protest of the Israel-Gaza conflict in Washington, D.C. last October, Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. Although Mena had no ill will for AZFamily, he said he didn’t feel like he was telling the full story of the footage he watched in the editing bay.
“To the 10,000 children in Gaza that have lost a limb in this conflict, I give my left arm to you,” Mena said, right before he set his arm on fire.
Bipartisan agreement, sorta: Now that Democrats’ names appear first on ballots, Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin agrees with Democratic lawmakers that the order of which candidate’s name appears first on a ballot creates an unfair advantage, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Kolodin introduced HB2045 to require that the order of candidates’ names rotate among voting precincts to give each party’s candidates a fair shot. Right now, the law says members of the party that won the most recent governor’s race in their county go first. That means Democrats are listed first in Maricopa County.
Extra! Extra!: Wick Communications is looking for somebody to buy the Eastern Arizona Courier. The company is trying to get a local buyer for the newspaper, first published in 1895 in Safford, and the Copper Era, in business since 1899 in Clifton.
Help us buy the Eastern Arizona Courier to add to our growing media empire!
Not just an Arizona problem: The real estate management company that Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing for allegedly colluding to raise rents, RealPage, is now one of six companies facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department that covers 43 states. The Washington Post put together an interactive map that shows where the company operates, including a bunch in Maricopa County.
Kapow! Thunk! Sold!: The Batmobile from the campy 1960s Batman television show is going up for auction later this month in Scottsdale, the Daily Independent reported. Also on the auction block are the Ford Gran Turino from “Starsky and Hutch,” Herbie from “The Love Bug,” and the Mach 5 from “Speed Racer.”
We mentioned this week a few of the recent projects we’ve been working on (including our new weekly policy newsletters, the Water Agenda, Education Agenda and A.I. Agenda. Subscribe now!).
But we have another neat tool called Wolfpack that we’d like you to test out for us.
It’s a unique email generator to empower grassroots lobbying.
What does that mean?
Well, do you remember our legislation to build a monument on the Arizona Capitol lawn honoring murdered journalist Don Bolles?
If we had Wolfpack back then, that bill might have actually become law.
The way it works is you set up a campaign by writing a little context about your issue.5 Then, an AI model drafts up some talking points that you can revise. You can choose a few other settings and then set your sights on whichever lawmakers (or anyone really) you want to target.
Then, voila: You have a link you can send to everyone you know.
Each time a person clicks the link, Wolfpack will draft up a brand new email using your talking points. The user can then edit that email to their liking, and send it from their personal email to your targeted lawmakers with a single click.
It’s pretty awesome.
Though we doubt the lawmakers will agree.
Give it a try today!
Just click the button to support a monument to Bolles.
We’ll be using Wolfpack here at the Agenda to help you readers chime in for or against legislation (and whatever else comes to mind).
And if this sounds like a tool your organization could use, try it out!
Email Tracy@skywolf.ai to set up a trial.
We told you yesterday about Republican Sen. John Kavanagh’s bill to make letting go of balloons a crime.
But the senator — who is among our many distinguished daily readers — now says that bill is a bust.
Releasing balloons is already considered littering, and his bill would have unintentionally lowered the penalty. So he’s killing the bill, he wrote in the comments section of yesterday’s post.
“Lawmaking is tough, which is why we earn $24k per year and all the lunches on the lawn we can eat,” he wrote.
Also, egg baron Clint Hickman has egg on his face after claiming to know the original “Big Baby” on that weird West Valley billboard-esque advertisement for Duncan Farms.
Here’s his retraction:
“Apparently I could not determine the baby’s gender whizzing past the 303 at the legal speed limit, and must eat crow and say I was WRONG and I sincerely apologize to Ms. (Jaymee) Lawton, the rightful baby in question,” he texted us yesterday. “However, Aggies are always proud to admit mistakes, apologize and quickly retreat back to the farm. Can you please let your readers and Channel 12 know I regret the error and will not be commenting on the Gerber Baby either?”
On Friday, Sinema filed paperwork with the Arizona Corporation Commission to launch a new business called “GSDAZ, LLC.” And she paid the $400 fee to expedite the paperwork.
Kennedy, like several other people we called who are connected to the effort, wouldn’t comment.
However, Sinema is more thrifty with her own funds — she often resells her lightly used designer clothes and sports equipment on Facebook Marketplace.
There’s also a less-detailed side-rumor going around that Sinema is working on something with ASU and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Sinema once called him the smartest person she’s ever met. (He donated to her campaign shortly after that). But that rumor was murky at best.
For today’s campaign, we just fed Wolfpack a story we wrote about Bolles.
We were but a stepping-stone for the likes of Sinema. She used us, abused us, and will continue to do so if we let her. It's about time the local and national Chambers of Commerce realized that too many of their businesses are destroying our cities and our world. Everyone wants to make money, certainly enough to support our families, but those like Sinema, selfishly build empires that only serve HER needs.
If my students sign up under the free option, how can I tell what comments they will view so I know which ones to talk about? Also, have you considered a student rate?