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Kyrsten Sinema once lived in a shuttered country store, surviving with the help of food stamps and local Mormons. Now she’s a rising Democratic star.

Defuniak Springs, Fla. • The simple, cinder-block structure looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. A board covers one large window, and broken glass hangs in another. Rotten beams frame the roof. Out front, a tall, rusted light pole rises from an oval concrete pad, a ghostly reminder of the gas pumps that stood there long ago.

This former gas station and country store on a rolling ribbon of rural highway in the Florida Panhandle, across the road from an endless vista of cotton fields, is a main character in Rep. Kyrsten Sinema's life story.