“The meth lab of democracy”: that’s what Democrat U.S. Senate hopeful Kyrsten Sinema thinks of Arizona, the state she represents in the U.S. House of Representatives. It is the latest example of defamatory comments she has made about the state, which have resurfaced in the final weeks of her U.S. Senate campaign.
In a newly posted video of Sinema giving a Netroots Nation speech in 2010, she gestured to a quote she says was posted on a screen. “As we see in this very quote that the states are the laboratories of democracy,” she says.
“And then my state, Arizona, is clearly the meth lab of democracy,” she goes on, giving credit for the line to someone at The Daily Show. “But I’m happy to steal it and use it all the time”:
In 2010, Sinema lamented and suggested Arizona was never in the news for anything good:
Sinema has come under scrutiny recently for several defamatory comments made against Arizonans, Arizona Republicans, and stay-at-home moms.
Video surfaced this week of Sinema speaking at a 2011 Texas event, mocking Arizonans as “crazy.” In that video, she explains how she learned about the five C’s of Arizona as a kid, the five sources from which Arizona’s economy has historically profited. She then proudly proclaims her own sixth C: “It’s called crazy.” The five she had listed were cattle, copper, citrus, cotton, and climate.
She claimed to the 2011 group that for a number of years, “people would watch what’s happening in Arizona and be like, ‘Damn, those people are crazy. Is it something about the water?’” Sinema’s response, according to her account, was, “No, the water’s fine. We swell from Colorado. There’s nothing wrong with the water. They just–they’re just called Republicans.” She then proceeded to launch into how the Texas crowd could “stop your state from becoming Arizona.”
The Democrat Senate hopeful’s ridicule of others does not stop there. During a 2006 interview with 944 magazine, she called conservative Republicans “Neanderthals” and slammed stay-at-home moms for “leeching off their husbands,” according to the Phoenix Business Journal.
“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. That’s bullshit. I mean, what the fuck are we really talking about here?” Sinema said in the 2006 interview, according to the Phoenix New Times
Criticism over the remarks led Sinema to make an attempt at explaining them away. She claimed they were made sarcastically and somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
The article defined Sinema as one of the more liberal Democrats in the state legislature.
Sinema is battling it out with Republican Rep. Martha McSally in the highly targeted race to replace outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake.
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook.