'Ego is a hell of a drug': Former Sinema friend says she has a boundless thirst to maintain her 'notoriety'

In an interview with the Daily Beast's Danielle Moodie, former Arizona lawmaker David Schapira recalled a conversation he had years ago with now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) that he felt revealed her boundless desire to be an object of attention no matter where it took her.

Speaking with the "New Normal" podcast host, Schapira called the Arizona senator an attention seeker with no underlying principles other than remaining "relevant" and maintaining an image of "notoriety."

Identifying himself as a former friend of the controversial senator, Schapira recalled how Sinema tried to convince him to forestall a run for the U.S. House of Representatives so she could run for the seat with the promise that she would only serve four years and then would help him run for her seat because she had bigger ambitions than remaining a mere House member.

According to Schapira, he was taken aback by her blatant admission of unbridled ambition.

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Claiming she told him, "If the most important thing I ever do is serve in the U.S. House, I'll be disappointed," he added, "It was shocking for me because it would have been an honor and a privilege to serve representing my home state of Arizona in the House of Representatives. It's a small group of people in that club."

"I don’t think her political ambition has any bounds, but I also don't think she has her eye on anything in particular” he told the podcast host before adding, "All she cares about is how relevant she is -- what her level of notoriety is. And as long as she can maintain that, I think she'll stay where she is if she is able to."

"Whatever she does next, whether she gets offered at Fox News, which I think they would offer and she would accept, or whatever it is, takes a seat on a Fortune 500 company board, or takes over as CEO of a company --wherever she think she can have notoriety and importance, that's where you'll find Kyrsten Sinema,.'

That led host Moodie to observe, "Yeah, ego is a hell of a drug."