Sinema’s departure in 2022 from Democratic Party drew House Democrat Ruben Gallego to a race also featuring Trump enthusiast and former TV news presenter Kari Lake PHOENIX (AP) — Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Tuesday that she won’t run for a second term after her estrangement from the Democratic Party left her politically homeless and without a clear path to re-election.

From the archives (December 2022): Sinema ditches Democrats, but analysts say it’s no Senate earthquake, just a re-election gambit

Sinema’s announcement comes after Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan bill to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border and deliver military aid to Ukraine and Israel, which Sinema spent months negotiating. She’d hoped it would be a signature achievement addressing one of Washington’s most intractable challenges, as well as a powerful endorsement for her increasingly lonely view that cross-party deal making remains possible.

But, in the end, Sinema’s border-security ambitions, and her career in Congress, were swallowed by the partisanship that has paralyzed Congress.

From the archives (January 2024): Bipartisan deal on border and Ukraine at risk of collapse as Trump presses Senate Republicans to walk away

Also see (December 2023): Border-deal talks continue as Trump invokes historically echoing blood-purity rhetoric against immigrants

“I love Arizona, and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered,” she said in a video posted to social media. “Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.”

Sinema’s decision avoids a three-way contest in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races, a hard-to-forecast scenario that spawned fierce debate among political operatives about whether one major party would benefit in the quest for the Senate majority. Most analysts agreed Sinema had faced significant, likely insurmountable hurdles if she’d decided to run.

Sinema had raised money for a potential reelection campaign and significantly stepped up her public appearances in Arizona throughout 2023, though her activities slowed as her announcement neared. During her five years in office, she built a formidable campaign bank account pegged at $10.6 million on Dec. 31, 2023, but her quarterly fundraising was outpaced by Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake.

Lake is tightly aligned with Donald Trump, the Republican former president who is a prohibitive favorite to secure the party’s presidential nomination for a third straight time, to the degree that she has backed each of his false stolen-election claims and also refused to accept her own loss in a 2022 gubernatorial race.