Politicians talk about "witch hunts" so often that the occult has almost become cliche in American politics. But in Arizona, there's at least one candidate on the ballot who takes sorcery very seriously.
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is not a witch. But she has been known to hang out with witches. It was during the height of the Iraq War when Sinema, then a far-left protest organizer, summoned supernatural help to stop the Iraq War.
Emails obtained by the Washington Examiner show Sinema inviting a prominent coven of feminist witches in Arizona called Pagan Cluster to celebrate International Women’s Day and to protest the war in March of 2003. Code Pink protesters wore pink, obviously enough, and the Women in Black wore black. But Sinema encouraged the witches to wear “colorful clothing and come ready to dance, twirl, and stay in touch with your inner creativity and with the Earth.”
The Sinema campaign would not say why she invited the witches or clarify why she thought members of the occult deserved a seat at the table during discussions concerning war and peace. The witches in question, it should be noted, claim to practice only nonviolent magic. Per the about section on their webpage, theirs is a peaceful and democratic kind of sorcery.
Out of the broom closet and into the public square, the Pagan Cluster focuses “sharing spiritual insights and participating in direct democracy.” Their visions are decidedly liberal and many of their coven “have roots in the Reclaiming Tradition of feminist Witchcraft.”
This sort of hocus pocus wasn't isolated either. Later that year, in November, Sinema attended a similar anti-war rally, this one in Miami and with other pagans. In emails obtained by the Washington Examiner and archived online via the WaybackMachine, she writes about "singing and spiraling in the pagan's circle only 5 rows back from the police line." The magic was not enough to stop a police crackdown apparently. Sinema described the subsequent crowd control and arrests as "brutal."
