Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was the only Democrat absent from Vice President Kamala Harris’s bipartisan dinner for women of the Senate.
The dinner at the Naval Observatory residence in Washington, D.C., invited all 24 female senators. Sinema, however, was the only Democrat to skip the event, while Republican Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Cynthia Lummis did not attend on the GOP side. In all, 15 Democrats and 6 Republican senators were present at the dinner.
None of the three senators who skipped the dinner offered comment on their absence, but Hyde-Smith and Lummis have both been vocal opponents of the Biden administration. Sinema was back in Arizona at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on infrastructure needs, though the centrist Democrat had also just suffered a broken foot while running a marathon over the weekend.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow posted pictures of the dinner on social media, which showed Harris seated next to GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Stabenow also raved about the vice president’s homemade cheese puffs.
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“What a wonderful bipartisan women Senators dinner at our @VP’s residence,” Stabenow said on Twitter. “Thank you Kamala! I am so proud of you!”
Our Vice President even made the cheese puffs herself!
And they were so good! pic.twitter.com/hK0pgonBTA— Sen. Debbie Stabenow (@SenStabenow) June 16, 2021
Sinema has in recent months become a controversial figure in her own party, joining Sen. Joe Manchin as Democrats that have vowed not to vote to eliminate the legislative filibuster.
The Arizona Democrat’s refusal to budge on the filibuster has caused a roadblock for much of President Joe Biden’s agenda in the evenly split Senate, leading to frustration from some in her own party.
Biden himself has taken aim at Simena, claiming that she and Manchin “vote more” with the GOP.
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“I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’” Biden said during a speech earlier this month. “Well, because Biden only has the 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. But we’re not giving up.”
