Thank You For the Visuals on Video, Senator Sinema.

Video of the Arizona Senator casting her no vote for the minimum wage increase has understandably sparked outrage online.

Lauren Elizabeth
4 min readMar 6, 2021
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As many of us who have been following the fate of the $15 minimum wage in the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill already know, eight Senate Democrats voted alongside the Republican party to kill the amendment including the wage increase. A wage increase that would have given America’s lowest earning workers a raise they have not seen since 2009. Among the eight, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema had been vowing to vote against this piece of the bill virtually from the time Joe Biden indicated his intentions to include it.

As if eight Senate Democrats sending a message to the left and killing what is inarguably the bare minimum of progressive policy goals wasn’t infuriating enough, the now viral video of Senator Sinema casting her no vote has sparked justifiable outrage online. Head held high and making her way to the center of the Senate floor, Sinema made a show of sticking her arm all the way out, jutting out her hip and knee into what looked like a half attempt at a curtsy, and gleefully turned her thumb down before throwing her bag over her shoulder and marching away.

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Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx