Overview

Kyrsten Sinema's Thumbs Down Vote refers to video footage of United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) making a thumbs-down gesture in a vote regarding raising the minimum wage in the United States to $15 an hour. She was one of eight Democratic Senators to vote against the increase. When the footage began circulating online in early March 2021, it was met with an immediate backlash on Twitter.

Background

On March 5th, 2021, the United States Senate voted on U.S. President Joe Biden's COVID-19 pandemic relief package. The bill, which passed through the House of Representatives, included a provision to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2025. However, the Senate Parliamentarian claimed that the provision would violate Senate rules, and Democrats would have to vote on the provision's inclusion for the Senate vote.

The vote failed, with eight Democratic Senators going against the party. These include Senators Joe Manchin III (West Virginia), Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Tom Carper and Chris Coons (Delaware), Jon Tester (Montana) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona).^[1] When Sinema delivered her vote on the Senate floor, she did so with a thumb-down hand gesture emphasized by a slight bend of the knee (shown below).

Developments

Online Reaction

Many people who supported the wage increase expressed their disappointment in Senator Sinema's vote.^[2] On March 5th, 2021, Sawyer Hackett, a senior advisor for Julian Castro, tweeted the video with the caption, "Did Sinema really have vote against a $15 minimum wage for 24 million people like this?" The tweet received more than 1.8 million views, 17,000 likes and 6,400 retweets in less than three days (shown below).

Did Sinema really have vote against a $15 minimum wage for 24 million people like this? pic.twitter.com/Jv0UXLKLHI

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) March 5, 2021

That day, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan (Wisconsin) retweeted a 2014 tweet^[3] in which Sinema said, "A full-time minimum-wage earner makes less than $16k a year. This one’s a no-brainer. Tell Congress to #RaiseTheWage!" The post received more than 40,000 likes and 6,400 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

The vote inspired numerous threads on Reddit. A thread in the /r/politics subreddit about the tweet received more than 53,000 points (90% upvoted) and 3,600 comments in less than three days. The top comment by Redditor Twoweekswithpay reads, "I know she said that the minimum wage should not be a part of the reconciliation process, but her statement is not very transparent about her reasons for voting this down. And her “thumbs down” display was obviously going to anger others hoping for this in the bill. For a party that wants to promote unity, her approach seems to run counter to this goal."

There were numerous other threads on the subject in various subreddits, including /r/politics,^[4][5][6] /r/aboringdystopia,^[7] /r/wayofthebern^[8] and more.

Media Coverage

Several media outlets covered the controversy, including New York Times,^[1] HuffPost,^[2] Jacobin,^[9] The Hill,^[10] CNN,^[11] New York Post^[12] and more.

Search Interest

External References