Sen. Kyrsten Sinema defended her decision to oppose Democrats’ efforts to end the 60-vote filibuster threshold during a panel at the World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a stance that helped sink the party’s efforts to pass voting-access laws last year.
The Arizona senator, who changed her party affiliation to independent from Democratic in December, said the results of the 2022 elections backed up her belief that it was misguided of Democrats to try to eliminate the legislative filibuster in order to pass the voting-access legislation.
“That massive voting-rights bill wasn’t passed through Congress. And then we had free and fair elections all across the country,” she said. “So one could posit that the push by one political party to eliminate an important guardrail and an institution in our country may have been premature or overreaching in order to get the short term victories they wanted.”
Democrats had argued their legislation was needed to ensure fair elections, while many Republicans called the efforts federal overreach.
Ms. Sinema was speaking on a crowded panel that included Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the other member of the Democratic caucus last year who publicly opposed getting rid of the filibuster. At one point during the panel, they high-fived over their shared stance.
Both Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin said at the time that they supported the voting-access bill but didn’t support changing the filibuster rule to pass it.
Democrats did...
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