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Rep. Ruben Gallego is stepping up his attacks on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — a fellow Arizona Democrat — as he mulls challenging her in the 2024 Senate Democratic primary.
In an interview with Politico's Ryan Lizza, Gallego said he's still weighing whether challenging Sinema would be good for the Arizona Democratic Party, which, he added, Sinema doesn't care about.
"Look ... I care about the Arizona Democratic Party," Gallego said during the interview. "I have done everything, some of the hardest time, to keep this party alive. But I'm not going to do something that's going to harm the Democratic Party."
Gallego said he considered challenging currently-serving Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona in 2020, but decided against it for the sake of the party.
"I realized that two things are going to happen," he told Politico. "We're going to have a blowout fight all the way up into the primary, and the most likely thing is that whoever won that primary was going to lose that general because we're going to fight each other."
Gallego then turned his fire on Sinema, alleging that the senior Democratic senator from Arizona is "not here that often" and is "not going to be out here stumping for Democrats."
"She's all about herself," Gallego said. "She's not going to help Mark. She's not going to help Katie Hobbs or whoever the Democrat is [in the governor's race]. It's all about herself."
"It's just like she cares about herself," he added. "She doesn't care about the Democratic movement. She doesn't care about working class people."
Sinema "cares more about her career than she cares about what we can do with our elected office," and doesn't understand the state's electorate as well as him, Gallego went on to say.
"I think she understands Arizona from a perspective many years ago, but she actually doesn't understand Arizona like what's happening," he said. "She's running based on past elections, but she isn't involved to see what's happening here."
Sinema's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Gallego is frequently mentioned as a top potential contender to Sinema in 2024, given Democratic frustrations with her hindrance of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda. Progressives and liberals blame Sinema, in part, for the failure of the Build Back Better climate and social spending bill given her opposition to key provisions of the bill.
Sinema also blocked an attempt by Senate Democrats to change the chamber's filibuster rules — which requires 60 votes to pass most pieces of legislation — in order to pass voting rights legislation. In January, Gallego said it was "deeply disappointing" that Sinema didn't stand with the Democratic party on federal election reform.
"We won't shrink from protecting our democracy and the voting rights of all Americans," he said. "It's past time for the US Senate and Senator Sinema to do the same."
In both instances, Sinema was joined by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But some Democrats are willing to live with Manchin's opposition to major Democratic priorities — West Virginia has become a deeply conservative state, and many are skeptical that a Democrat besides Manchin can win there — while Arizona has drifted towards Democrats in recent years, with Biden narrowly carrying the state in 2020.
Gallego, for his part, recently had a record fundraising quarter, and an October 2021 poll found him leading Sinema 62-23 in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.
