Hello,

welcome to Politico's nerd cast.

I'm Scott Bland, your host.

This week on the show, we are going to talk about Senator Kirsten Cinema.

Not really a household name in American politics. She's a freshman Democratic senator. in her because she represents a really interesting tension we're seeing in Congress and on the campaign trail.

As a story in Politico described her this week, she's a radical centrist.

She really doesn't mind bucking her party, and that makes her an important figure in a few different ways.

In the ongoing fight within the Democratic Party about the best way to win elections,

win swing states, turn red states blue, but also in the impeachment fight that's ramping up

quickly this week

with the House voting Thursday on a resolution to lay out guidelines for that process.

So a quick note before we get started we're taping this on Thursday

that's Halloween this week so if anything notable or breaking or spooky happens after that,

we will cover it on the next episode. Now we're going to go back to cinema and with us to talk all

about it is Burgess Everett, Politico's intrepid Senate reporter who's on the line.

Burgess, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me, Scott.

So where are you recording from today?

We're up in the windowless third floor of the capital

Wonderful. It sounds very very picturesque so the reason we've got you on this week you wrote this great piece about Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema and

I was so excited when I saw this piece pop up on the budget earlier this week because, you know,

cinema is kind of an enigmatic figure and

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