John Munger of Tucson (left) speaks with Valley media Friday after filing paperwork to campaign for the Republican nomination for governor (Photo by Capitol Media Services).

Tucson lawyer John Munger made official this morning what’s been expected for months: he’s running for governor. Unlike the other major player willing to challenge Gov. Jan Brewer so far, Munger became a formal candidate after submitting his paperwork today to the Secretary of State’s Office.

The former chairman of Arizona Republican Party actually has been on the campaign trail since early in this year, when he established an independent expenditure group called Imagine Arizona. That move allowed him to raise money to pay for an issues web site, to write guest columns and to travel around the state speaking to various groups, all without disclosing his election plans until this week. In fact, Munger has got to be the most active candidate for any statewide office (who’s not already holding such an office) up to this point.

Of course, Munger needed that extra groundwork as he has a significant disadvantage: He’s from Tucson, which much of the state views as reliable territory for the Democratic Party despite its sizable pockets of Republican enclaves. However, Munger is well-known among Republicans for his leadership activities which included helping to manage John McCain’s Arizona team during the 2008 presidential election.

While Imagine Arizona was touted as a wide-ranging public policy forum, Munger’s most detailed analysis has been on health care reform. He has articulated a rather robust answer to Democratic plans in Washington that Arizona could pursue in a constructive fashion that certainly should be appealing to conservatives or moderates, but not libertarians.

What Munger lacks is any detailed explanation for how he would handle Arizona’s huge budget problems. That issue is going to dominate next year’s campaign, and one active political commenter has a great point about anyone who wants to run for this office should enter the race with some idea of what they would do.