THAYER VERSCHOOR               CHUCK GRAY

There’s a good chance that the next president of the Arizona Senate will be a Republican from the Mesa-Gilbert area, as Sens. Thayer Verschoor and Chuck Gray are heavyweight contenders for the post.

With current President Tim Bee leaving the Senate after this year, Verschoor started letting his colleagues know months ago he wanted to move up from his present leadership post of majority floor leader. The political party with the most senators picks the president, who runs the chamber by selecting committees and deciding which bills get assigned to them, and by choosing when bills go to the floor for everyone to debate.

When it became clear that Verschoor would face a serious primary challenge from Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, two other senators showed interest in running for president – Bob Burns of Peoria and Barbara Leff of Paradise Valley. Verschoor won his primary Tuesday and Burns is still in the hunt. But Leff apparently was counting on votes from friendly Republicans such as Sen. Tom O’Halleran of Sedona and Rep. Pete Hershberger, of Tucson. O’Halleran and Hershberger both lost their Senate primaries this week, so fellow senators say Leff told them she’s dropping her bid.

Instead, Chuck Gray has emerged as a serious challenger to Verschoor and Burns. Gray told me today he actually resolved to run on the last day of the regular session, when traditional decorum was shredded under an effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and after adoption of a state budget almost at the last minute.

“I’m tired of the vitriol, the back-biting, the in-fighting and an inability to get a budget out much earlier in the year,” Gray told me. “I decided the only way to do that is to step up and step into leadership.”

Both Gray and Verschoor are unopposed in the general election. So they can focus for the next few weeks on lobbying other Republican senators while Burns has to deal with running a campaign (although I haven’t heard he has any serious risk of losing).

Verschoor’s existing leadership post gives him an advantage. But personality plays a big role when you only need a handful of votes (There are currently 17 Republican senators). Gray said he believes he can appeal as an outsider to a crop of newcomers, if they are elected, including Sylvia Allen of Snowflake (appointed this year to replace the deceased Sen. Jake Flake), Steve Pierce of Prescott (who defeated O’Halleran in a Republican district) and Al Melvin of Tucson. One vote that surely will be lobbied hard is Russell Pearce of Mesa.

“It plays right to my conservative values,” Gray said. “These people are coming here because they want to make changes, not stay with the status quo.”

Assuming Senate Republicans hold on to their majority, they will conduct a secret vote for president and other leadership positions a few days after the Nov. 4 election. The last senator from the East Valley to hold the job was in 2001-02, a time when the Senate was equally divided between Republicans and Democrats and Sen. Randall Gnant, R-Scottsdale, struck a deal with the other party to win the post.