Long before she gave a thumbs-down to a $15 minimum wage, kowtowed to Big Pharma, and blocked progressives’ efforts to dismantle the filibuster, US senator Kyrsten Sinema, nominal Democrat and onetime Green Party activist, attempted to scuttle the recall of State Senate president Russell Pearce, author of Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant legislation, Senate Bill 1070, which effectively empowered local cops to stop brown people on “reasonable suspicion” and inquire into their immigration status.

Veteran organizer and former Democratic US Senate candidate Randy Parraz writes about Sinema’s skullduggery in his recent book Dignity by Fire: Dismantling Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Machine, an account of how, in 2011, Parraz pulled together an unlikely coalition of progressives, Latinos, centrist Republicans, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to topple Pearce in a ruby-red legislative district in Pearce’s hometown of Mesa, located some twenty miles east of Phoenix.

In less than a year, Pearce went from being the most powerful politician in the state — referred to by some as Arizona’s “de facto governor,” with immense power over the state’s budget and legislative agenda — to a racist has-been, bested by 12 points in an unprecedented recall election by a moderate, pro-immigration Republican.