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Recent reports reveal that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has utilized over $200,000 in taxpayer funds for private air travel since 2020. The Daily Beast disclosed in January that Sinema incurred $116,000 in private plane expenses in 2023, charged to her Senate office budget.
Taxpayers have allegedly footed a bill of approximately $210,000 for Sinema’s air travel since 2020. Despite being elected as a Democrat in 2018 and subsequently switching to an independent, Sinema reportedly did not conduct any publicly accessible, in-person town hall meetings while accumulating these expenses, as per Fox News.
Fox also noted that Sinema’s sole in-person town hall took place in 2022 during a visit to Honeywell, an event exclusively attended by employees.
Fox reported that in 2017, Sinema supported the No Ongoing Perks Enrichment Act, which sought to “prohibit the use of funds provided for the official travel expenses of Members of Congress and other officers and employees of the legislative branch for first-class airline accommodations.”
According to the Arizona Republic, Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema, stated that the convenience and effectiveness of air travel are the reasons why Sinema chooses to fly.
“Arizonans know it can take hours to get from Prescott to Yuma. Senator Sinema maximizes her time in Arizona to connect with as many constituents in every corner of the state as possible,” Hurley said in a statement.
The Daily Beast reported that Senator Mark Kelly, the other U.S. senator from Arizona and a Democrat, has not incurred any private plane expenses covered by taxpayers. Jordan Libowitz, from the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, voiced criticism towards Sinema’s use of flights.
“This is one of those things that does raise the question of, is this the best way to manage the budget? … Could she be doing more for the state otherwise?” he said.
“She’s seemed pretty good at finding the ways to do it that people are going to see and are not going to like but, generally, don’t rise to the level of being an actual legal problem,” he said.
Libowitz said Sinema’s private flights “[play] into this larger thing we’ve seen with her, where she tends to go right up to the line of what she’s able to do with spending other people’s money in the way she would best prefer.”
Libowitz pointed out that the difference between Kelly and Sinema is significant.
“The dichotomy … shows you what the normal thing is, which is, you get in the car and you drive, especially in a state that has a highway system,” he said.
Sinema has not made a statement regarding her intentions to run for re-election in November. Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake are both competing for her seat. In a poll conducted in January, Sinema trailed behind her opponents in a three-way race.