Kyrsten Sinema skipped Capitol riot commission vote for ‘personal family matter’

After urging GOP senators to back bipartisan investigation, Arizona Democrat skipped vote

Kyrsten Sinema was one of two Democratic senators to skip a procedural vote to create a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection, which failed after broad Republican objections and 11 senators skipped the vote entirely.

The centrist Democratic senator from Arizona told reporters in Tucson on Tuesday, four days after the vote on 28 May, that she had a “personal family matter” that prevented her from casting her vote. She did not elaborate, though her office said she would have voted “yes” on the measure.

On 25 May, Senator Sinema issued a joint statement with centrist Democratic Senator Joe Manchin urging Republicans “to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events” of 6 January.

A procedural measure to begin debate on the proposal failed by a vote of 54-25, marking the GOP’s first successful legislative filibuster in this Congress, and effectively killing any chances of a bipartisan effort to investigate the events surrounding the riot and its aftermath.

Eleven senators skipped the vote, including Senator Sinema and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, who also said she flew home that day for a “personal family matter”.

The measure needed 60 votes to move forward.

Senators Manchin and Sinema have resisted calls to reform filibuster rules in the evenly divided Senate, where the Democrat agenda – including critical voting rights protections and Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure and social services packages – is at risk of GOP blockades without breaking a filibuster requiring 60 votes to pass legislation.

In remarks from Tulsa, Oklahoma on Tuesday, the president criticised the two senators for obstructing his agenda without calling them by name.

“I hear all the folks on TV saying why doesn’t Biden get this done?” he said. “Because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”

A proposed bipartisan congressional commission – modelled after the 9/11 Commission in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks – would allow Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to evenly appoint the makeup of the commission, and witness testimony would be subpoenaed only if it has the support of a majority of the commission’s members, or if the chair and vice chair (each appointed by Democrats and Republicans, respectively) agree to issue the subpoena.

The commission also would have to submit a report to the White House and to Congress by the end of the year and dissolve 60 days after, roughly nine months before 2022 elections.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected calls for a presidential commission and suggested the Senate reconsider a proposal, or hand the investigation to a select committee in the House of Representatives, which approved the measure by a vote of 252-175, with 35 Republicans supporting it.