Authentic, a Democratic digital consulting company, has dropped Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) as a client after Sinema changed her political affiliation from Democrat to Independent on Friday, according to a source close to the company who spoke to Politico.
This firm represented Sinema for many years, but her removal as a client puts her at a disadvantage in 2024, when she is up for reelection.
On Friday, Sinema announced she would be leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent in an interview released on Friday morning with CNN's Jake Tapper, saying she was convinced that the decision did make “a lot of sense” due to the fact that a “growing number of Arizonans and people like me just don't feel like we fit neatly into one party's box or the other.”
All this has happened after the company's digital division experienced an uproar amongst its employees in the spring of this year when Sinema opposed bills that the Biden administration had pushed, such as the elimination of the filibuster in the Senate that many Democrats desired, as well as her notorious thumbs-down vote for an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
In a report released earlier in the year, employees expressed they were in “shock and agitation” as to why their employer, which “professes fidelity to a set of progressive values,” had collaborated with Sinema. In an internal union communication that the newspaper reviewed, one of the company's staff members said, “I am doing the devil's work,” and another employee stated, “I feel sick about it tbh.”
The company did not provide a comment to Politico. And Sinema's office also declined to answer a query from the publication.
Politico reported that Sinema’s campaign has given the company more than $700,000 in business since 2020. Records kept by the Federal Election Commission showed that the expenditures included the cost of digital consultation as well as list acquisition.
Interestingly, even after Sinema's change of party, the Democrats will retain complete control of the Senate with 51 seats, because she'll caucus with the Democrats.
