She claims to be independent, that's not the case.
The case is that she can't win a primary against me and this is her only option.
And more importantly, she really has just abandoned the values of Arizona and
her being independent has nothing to do with the values of Arizona.
It just means that she has an easier time to run and
she could go and talk to her friends in Wall Street and the farmer companies.
>> It is looking like very soon we're gonna be in the middle of a showdown to
determine the fate of that Senate seat in Arizona.
You saw in that video back last month, Congressman Ruben Gallego attacking
Kyrsten Sinema after she fled the Democratic Party so that she wouldn't have
to run in a primary against him or whoever and probably go down in flames.
And it is looking like we're about to have a campaign because according to sources
inside of Ruben Gallego office, he is planning to announce his challenge against
Senator Sinema on this coming Monday.
And according to this source, he's already got some people on board for
the challenge, including members of John Fetterman's campaign.
Top Strategist Rebecca Katz, Chuck Rocha, who's been on the network many,
many times,
Architect Bernie Sanders, effort to reach Latino voters back in the 2020 campaign.
And so he's prepping for that.
Meanwhile, she's busy too.
She went to Davos and just cavorted around with some rich people,
wasn't it nice, she talked about the deeply broken two party system here,
which now she's not a part of, she's independent of it.
So don't blame her for any of this stuff.
She called Kevin McCarthy a dear friend as he was busy throwing
multiple Democrats off of their committees and
putting Marjorie Greene in charge of Homeland Security.
So that was cool.
She high fived Joe Manchin over their continued support for the filibuster.
So a lot of fun stuff, but she's about to have a challenger if she does run again,
what do you make of that?
>> Yeah, okay, so a couple things, first,
Gallego is set to win this thing entirely and
in almost any scenarios we're gonna lay out here in a second.
Second word, she's an independent.
Now of course, you need a Democratic candidate.
Now her strategy was, well, I'll bully the Democrats.
I'll do a Trump like threat if well, if you run a Democrat and
I run as an independent, you'll have no chance of winning, Republican's winning.
Maybe somebody like Kari Lake and she'll become a senator.
Ha ha, I'm gonna hold the entire party hostage,
again, as Trump did on the right, okay.
The problem for her is the latest polling, we're gonna show you in a second,
that shows that that strategy is not going to work.
Okay, then that leads you to another question, which is,
is Gallego a good guy or bad guy and of course it's not that binary, right?
But is he generally progressive or
is he more on the corporate side?
Well, Gallego historically has been more progressive at the same
time Kyrsten Sinema came in as progressive and
it turns out she was a complete and utter liar.
So with these politicians,
I tread very lightly in terms of what they actually mean.
But good news on that end, those two names that John just read you
are diehard progressive consultants, Rebecca Katz, Chuck Rocha.
And they worked on Fetterman, Chuck Rocha worked famously on Bernie Sanders
campaigns and they are in fact progressive.
Okay, so that is a very good sign for who Gallego is.
Now before we go to Michael, let me just lay out the numbers for you guys.
Part of the reason that Sinema stopped being a Democrat is because she
saw the same polling that Gallego put out there and and showed everybody,
which is that in a Democratic primary Gallego would have beat her 74, 16.
Na na na na na na bye Felicia, this is not West Virginia.
And Sinema's now despised by Democrats in Arizona.
And by the way, it was mainly because of all the things that you've seen,
she blocked the entire Democratic agenda etc, but
also because they know more personally what a liar she is.
She came in as very progressive.
That's the senator that they voted for and she lied about all of our positions.
She's one of the most brazenly corrupt politicians we've ever had.
But here this is very important.
Let's go to graphic too.
But his allies point to a Public Policy Poll on behalf of Gallego in December that
shows Sinema floundering with 13% support in a three-way general election race.
While Gallego and Kari Lake, a possible Republican opponent
were essentially tied 41% to 40% in a two-way matchup.
Should Sinema not run for re-election as some Democrats hope,
Gallego had 48% support and Lake was at 47%.
Basically, Gallego and Lake are tied in any three-way scenario and
in a two-way scenario, what does that tell you about Sinema?
That 13% she has first of all sucks, but could cost a Democrat an election,
13% is a big number.
But as it turns out, congratulations Kyrsten Sinema,
you actually are bipartisan cuz your 13% is coming half from Democrats and
half from Republicans, thereby making it ironically irrelevant, Michael.
>> Yeah, coming to from Republicans who can't stand the Blake Masters,
Kari Lake wing of the Arizona Democratic Party.
A couple of things to also point out is that Greg Stanton and other people who
might have run for this seat against Sinema have cleared the way for Gallego.
So you sort of have this unanimity of choice in Arizona which is really
important.
The other part of this is that Kyrsten Sinema can talk about all she wants
about how she has bipartisan support.
But we all know that the money coming from the party is so important in
these races and the money is not gonna be going to Sinema in this race and
it's gonna be going to Gallego.
It seems more of a genuine article.
Jackie talked about how we thought that Sinema was gonna be this progressive
lion in the Senate.
I don't know that we really knew what we were dealing with with Sinema.
We knew that she was a quirky person and the quirk turned out to be that she was
gonna stand in the way of everything Democrats wanted to do,
especially in progressive ways.
That's not gonna be the case with Gallego.
I think that he does present as more of a genuine article.
He also has the military background,
he has the parts of Arizona that Sinema is losing.
He has those locked up.
I think it's important that we see exactly what you're talking about,
which is that people are going to both sides here, but
it's not really going to matter because all the Democratic money and
all the Democratic support is gonna be going to Sinema.
There are a lot of Democrats who are not comfortable voting for
her, don't like what she did, those are the people that are going to Gallego.
And there are a lot of Republicans who think that their party has gone too far to
the right.
Those votes are gonna come away from Kari Lake or Blake masters,
should they be the nominee.
The last dynamic that we have to think about is Kari Lake has hitched her tail to
Donald Trump from the beginning.
If Ron DeSantis is on the ballot as the presidential candidate for
the Republicans in 2024 or someone who isn't Donald Trump,
Kari Lake stock is going to plummet in Arizona.
>> Well, it's also possible that if it is Donald Trump and if he is choosing for
her to be the VP then that could influence this race as well.
She definitely wants to be that VP candidate, but
she gonna have to get past Marjorie Greene first.
We also have to project.
>> You're right, but there's also the Blake Masters aspect there who lost
the Senate seat there, that's gonna come into play.
So Kari Lake and Blake Masters hard to draw other than personality was great
distinction between the two of them on paper.
>> Yeah, 100% and two years in the future, Kari Lake will have spent two more
years talking about how the election was rigged and that could help or hurt her.
Blake Masters could have been training between now and
then using all this billionaire money to raise his name recognition,
taking acting classes to pretend that while he's on the debate stage,
he's not thinking about removing someone's skin.
I mean, there's a lot of things that could influence the race going forward.
It's one thing to make the threat to try to force a Democratic opponent out and
have the Democratic Party realize that I guess our only chance is to support her,
even though she's a third party candidate.
But if she's going to get such a small percentage of the vote,
that doesn't help her politically, does she still do it anyway?
Does she do it because it still serves the interests of her donors to raise
the chance that a Republican will end up coming out of this thing as the winner.
What do we think at this point,
our gut says about how she'll respond to this polling.
Does she back out and just become a lobbyist, what does she do?
>> So, my guess on that front, Michael, [INAUDIBLE] what you think.
But my guest on that front is what Michael alluded to, which is the money.
So if she winds up getting a substantial amount of money and
she has a lot of friends on Wall Street.
She delivered big time for them.
But remember those guys don't wanna bet on a loser.
They're not gonna bet on someone who they think is gonna get 13% and
get annihilated.
They don't like wasting money.
So but if she somehow she can move up those poles and
get some sort of momentum and get money, then she'll stay in the race.
But if she gets no money at all and she's sitting at 13%,
yes, she could take an early retirement
package from one of those banks on Wall Street she delivered for.
And retire as a millionaire doing nothing but
sitting in an office somewhere pretending to, or
actually somewhat peddling influence with her former corrupt colleagues.
>> Yeah, I think you're spot on Cenk.
I also think that what's gonna happen as soon as she is unable to raise that money,
Democrats do wanna be careful with her too,
because they don't want her going against Gallego and not being in the race.
They don't want her supporting the Republican and not being in the race,
they kind of wanna play this out in as careful way as they possibly can.
And it is gonna come down to money though, if you can't raise the money, you can't
win the seat and you can't even make the statement you wanna make as a candidate.
If you can't raise the money, the Democratic money is not gonna be going to
her in droves and even if there's Wall Street money that is given to her in
the past, Wall Street money gives to lots of different candidates.
They could be giving money to Kyrsten Sinema and giving money to Ruben Gallego,
and by the way, the same pocket could be giving money to the Republican candidate
[INAUDIBLE] too as we know.