Rep. Ruben Gallego says some of Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate colleagues have encouraged him to run

Sinema’s numbers among Democrats were already in the tank even before she helped block a vote on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the civil rights icon she once dared call her “hero” and “dear friend.” Since then, she’s also lost the support of major progressive organizations EMILY’s List and NARAL. “We will no longer be able to endorse Sen. Sinema moving forward,” wrote EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler.

“In an interview Thursday, Gallego said the last few weeks have amounted to a ‘tipping point situation’ among many in his party since there’s been ‘a whole lot of frustration over a lot of things that have occurred in the past with Sen. Sinema, and this has kind of been the breaking point,” CNN reported. Some of the frustration has also included Sinema ignoring constituents, which has angered Gallego.

“She hasn’t had one town hall; everything she does is scripted,” he told CNN. “She says she refuses to negotiate in public, but we want to know who is she negotiating for? Is it for Arizonans? Or is it for the pharmaceutical companies or whatever other interests that she is more likely to have meetings with than it is with the actual constituents?”

One incident included Sinema ignoring a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient who approached her during a flight to plead for a pathway to citizenship.“I don’t want disturb you, but at the same time I just want see if I can get a commitment from you senator,” Arizona Dream Act Coalition Executive Director Karina Ruiz told her in October. “This is my life, and the life of millions in the line. I just need to hear from you.” She got silence instead.

Erika Andiola, a DACA recipient who worked for Sinema when she was in the House, has since called Sinema’s effort protecting the Jim Crow filibuster “devastating and dangerous,” noting that it killed the DREAM Act in 2010. “Now it kills voting rights. And it will continue to kill any progress for this country. All in the name of she calls ‘bipartisanship’. I hate to break it to you Kyrsten, but the party you are siding with is not what it used to be.”

“I’m disappointed by the failure of the senate to move the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” Gallego tweeted following Sinema’s vote against voting rights. “But I’m not giving up & neither should you. Let’s work hard to elect good Democrats who support voting rights and defeat the ones who don’t—in 22 and beyond.”