Arizona Senate hopeful Sinema once called her state ‘the meth lab of democracy’
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Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema once referred to Arizona as the “meth lab of democracy” – a revelation that follows the Democrat making other past critical comments about her state.
Video of Sinema’s 2010 comments were posted online Friday by Rep. Martha McSally, her Republican opponent.
“The states are the laboratory of democracy,” Sinema said in the speech to the liberal Netroots Nation conferencec. “And then my state – Arizona – is the clearly the meth lab of democracy.”
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Sinema added that she got the line from the Comedy Central show hosted by liberal comedian Jon Stewart.
“I cannot take credit for that line,” she said. “Someone at the Daily Show wrote it, but I’m happy to steal it and use it all the time.”
Sinema and McSally are battling it out in one of the most competitive Senate races this year. The winner will fill the Senate seat vacated by the retiring Republican Jeff Flake.
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The Fox News Midterm Power Rankings lists the Arizona race as a “toss-up.”
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Sinema implied that her home state produced "crazy" in a 2011 speech in which she also promised to advise liberal activists on how to "stop your state from becoming Arizona."
SINEMA IMPLIED STATE PRODUCED ‘CRAZY’ IN 2011 SPEECH
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Some critics compared those remarks to Hillary Clinton's infamous comment about Trump supporters being "deplorables."
"Calling Arizonans crazy and having particular disdain for Republicans when she wants Republicans to vote for her is unbelievable," McSally told reporters this week. "And Arizonans need to know about it."
An edited version of Sinema's speech to the Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus, a Democratic LGBT group in the Lone Star State, was posted on Twitter on Thursday by the Reagan Battalion, an anonymous conservative group. A longer version of the speech is available on YouTube.
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In the speech, Sinema recounts how she was taught at a young age that Arizona was known for "five Cs: cattle, copper, citrus, cotton and climate."
"But I would add a sixth 'C,'" added Sinema, then an Arizona state senator. "It's called crazy."
Sinema, a one-time Green Party activist, has fashioned herself as a moderate willing to work with both parties in her contest against fellow
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Sinema's campaign issued a response to the posting of the speech.
"She was frustrated that no one in the state legislature was standing up to out-of-state special interests working to take away health care from children, make tuition more expensive, and take job security away from working families," Sinema spokeswoman Helen Hare said in a statement Thursday. "Kyrsten was born here, and will always stand up to outside special interest groups to protect and defend Arizonans."
Fox News’ Samuel Chamberlain and The Associated Press contributed to this report.