Politics

New York Times Poll Has Martha McSally Ahead of Krysten Sinema

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The latest polling out of Arizona provides more indication that the race to become the state’s next U.S. senator is falling into GOP Rep. Martha McSally’s favor.

A New York Times/Siena College poll shows McSally beating Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema by two percentage points, 48 percent to 46 percent. The survey — conducted between Oct. 15 and 19 —  reached out to 606 people across the state. It carries a margin of error of 4.2 percent, indicating the election is still a tossup.

While the race is still anyone’s game, the latest poll shows a change in direction for McSally. Over the summer, the Republican congresswoman and combat veteran was trailing Democrat Sinema by as much as double digits. However, the GOP nominee has since closed the gap, and is now leading in the Real Clear Politics average of recent surveys. In an ABC poll released Oct. 9, McSally lead by six percentage points.

Sinema’s fall comes as more of her anti-war, extreme past has been unearthed, leading the Democratic congresswoman to fight off embarrassing headlines in the past few weeks.

Audio was uncovered earlier in October that revealed Sinema — an ardent opponent of the war in Afghanistan — saying during a 2003 radio interview that she “didn’t care” if Americans took up arms with the Taliban. The line was a sharp contrast to McSally, a former Air Force combat pilot who flew missions against the Taliban during the Afghanistan war. In an interview with a local news outlet on Wednesday, Sinema refused to repudiate her past comments.

Sinema co-founded an anti-war group, Local to Global Justice, that advertised a 2003 protest with flyers that depicted U.S. soldiers as skeletons waging “terror” in the Middle East. The flyer read: “You can help us push back U.S. terror in Iraq and the Middle East.”

I was thinking, “oh, how bad could it b-oh, man, that’s bad.” pic.twitter.com/4noL133v3t

— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) September 15, 2018

Her anti-war organization also invited an occult group on at least two separate occasions to participate in protest rallies.

Among other incendiary comments, Sinema also called Arizona the “meth lab of Democracy” during a liberal Netroots Nation conference in August.

During a 2006 interview, the Democratic Senate candidate referred to stay-at-home moms as leeches.

“These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they’re choosing to live that life,” Sinema said to Scottsdale nightlife magazine 944 at the time. “That’s bullshit. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?”

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