The past year has been a bitter pill to swallow for Franklin “Jake” Flake.

The former House speaker and now freshman senator from rural District 5 became embroiled last year in a budget fight with moderate Republicans in his caucus, who, in the end, rebelled and joined Democrats in passing a bigger budget than Mr. Flake wanted. No less bitter was his general election campaign for the Senate against Democrat Cameron Udall. Then in February, Mr. Flake, owner of the F Bar Cattle Co. near Snowflake and father of 13 children, lost one of his sons. He discussed these travails in a March 15 interview with Arizona Capitol Times.

I’d like to begin this interview by having you tell our readers about your son and his recent passing.

My son’s name was Darin. Darin was 39 years old. Darin contracted cancer when he was 19 — lymphoma in the neck. The doctor at that time said he had four months to live. The tumor had gone up from his neck into the brain. He had a very heavy treatment of radiation and chemotherapy for 25 days. It almost killed him. And it cured the cancer.

He was cleared of the cancer for 12 years, but it severely weakened him, and his thought processes were slower, his movements were slower. He was a 200-pound boy that never got over 135 pounds again.

He married and had children, which was a miracle in itself. But it was hard for him to be the breadwinner, so I brought him back to the ranch because he was a natural with livestock. He was standing behind a gate when we were loading cattle, and a bull — a one-ton bull — hit the gate, knocked the gate off the hinges, knocked him down. The bull went over the top of him, and he was in a coma for three days down here in St. Joseph’s Hospital.

He started having seizures that we couldn’t seem to control, and then the cancer came back again in a different place about 12 years later. He was in such a weakened condition they couldn’t treat the cancer. He survived that for eight years.

But the seizures kind of took their toll, and every time you have a seizure it takes a little bit more of your abilities. About three weeks before his passing, he had a major stroke, which paralyzed one of his sides, paralyzed his voice — he couldn’t speak and couldn’t swallow.

We sent him to a hospice home, a beautiful hospice home, and he lasted, I guess, about a week. His heart was strong. We were well prepared for this, but it still hurts.

You jumped right back into Senate business after his death. Did that help?

Sure, you’ve got to keep busy. Alva, my assistant, went up to the funeral. She said, “Now, you take a day off,” but I would’ve just sat home and mourned, so I came right back down and got into it again.

Do people still address you as Mr. Speaker?

Yes, quite often. I guess once a speaker, always a speaker.

Let’s go back to your tenure as speaker. Those were tough times for you and for House Republicans. Reflect on that, if you will, and tell us how you think you handled things overall.

I don’t know how I’d have done any differently. We had such a polarized group in the House. We had the ultra-conservatives. The middle-of-the-roads were the largest group, but they were conservative. And then we had some along the moderate side of my caucus. I don’t think having the large majority helped me any because it just polarized [things]. I was working with elective leadership that the caucus elected too.

The first year we worked very well together. We worked in a conservative way. We worked well with the governor, although it took a long time.

The second year budget was a little bit more serious than the first because times were a little tougher, and somehow we came in too low to where it drove the more moderate in the caucus over, you know, polarized them away, and they joined with the Democrats, and the governor pretty well took over and pretty well got her budget.

There was a time when we should have been able to bring them back together for a budget that would have been about $40 million under the Senate budget. But by the time I exerted enough influence on that, they had pretty much gone to the governor, and the governor put $33 million on top of the Senate budget.

Maybe I should have entered into it a little sooner, but I had to work with elected leadership. What I did is what I did, and you can’t change that very much.

It’s quite unusual for a House member to serve interrupted terms as speaker, such as the case with Speaker Jim Weiers, who replaced you. Although you had been elected to the Senate last year, who was your choice for speaker, and why was Mr. Weiers chosen?

He was an acceptable alternative. Three individuals I thought were pretty much the top runners for speaker. Well, actually four with Mr. [Bob] Robson, who was my speaker pro tem. Did a good job for me. Mr. [Eddie] Farnsworth, Mr. [Steve] Tully and Mr. [Gary] Pierce.

I really encouraged Mr. Tully and Mr. Pierce to stay in it because I thought the House needed their leadership. I thought it would come down to Tully or Farnsworth, and then Mr. Weiers came back in and gained momentum and cut a few deals, and then it looked like it was going to be between Weiers and Farnsworth. I still went to Mr. Tully and said, “You’d be a great majority leader, and you need some East Valley representation there, and Pierce’s name was there.

And so, two of the people I wanted to see in leadership got in there. I think we’ve got excellent leadership in both the House and the Senate.

Were you and Senate President Ken Bennett often at odds, and what is your relationship with him now?

Our first year we worked like hand-in-glove. Toward the end of the first year, we adopted their budget, but we also asked leadership to support our trailer bills for the budget to bring in some reforms. That didn’t happen, and there got to be a few feelings about that, especially in the House, where the stronger conservatives thought the Senate leadership let us down.

But Senator Bennett had a tough row to hoe. He had a couple of members leave him. He had to go to the Democrats, and did what he had to do. I thought he could have exerted a little stronger influence for our trailer bills. Yes, I had a few questions there. I felt we drifted a little further apart. I had a tough row to hoe to hold the conservative side.

My relationship with him now is excellent. I totally support him.

What has it been like to go from speaker to freshman senator?

It’s been a relief, but I miss it. You miss being the top dog. By the way, I hope you will put this down: I don’t think any staff has ever been assembled better than the staff that I had when I was in the House.

Do you think switching houses violates the spirit of term limits as some complain that it does?

I don’t think that at all. Term limits was a mistake. I voted for it 12 to14 years ago when it came in.

This interview will be published this Friday, March 18. Do you expect there will be a budget agreement between the House and Senate by then?

I hope so. I think there’ll be an agreement between the House and the Senate. As of yet, we haven’t brought the minority into it, which means the governor hasn’t entered into it. There’ll have to be some adjustments.

What changes in the initial Senate budget are you seeking?

I thought the initial budget was hitting rural Arizona very hard. We withstood the challenge to stop revenue sharing with the cities, so that’s not in the picture. But there were some pretty severe cuts to the counties. I directly represent five counties and have been a spokesman for all the counties.

[Cuts in] medical care for rural Arizona were really Draconian. In rur
al Arizona, AHCCCS only pays 52 per cent of costs in a hospital; in urban Arizona, it’s 93 per cent. Our hospitals in rural Arizona are slowly going broke. I have two in my district on the verge of bankruptcy. We’ve got a bill to adjust that.

The other one is community colleges. We need to stand up for our adult education centers. That’s what we call them in rural Arizona.

Is a trend developing where it’s going to cost more and more money to run privately funded campaigns for the Legislature?

Yes, it certainly did for me. I went through a tough campaign, battling the whole Democrat Party, including the chairman of the party and the governor, and seven, vicious, vicious, lie-infested mailers against me. My opponent, whom I got along with well, called the Democrat Party and opposed those mailers. I don’t know how much they spent. I don’t know how much I spent, but it was four times as much as a person should have to spend to run a campaign.

(A campaign finance report filed in December with the Secretary of State’s Office reports that Mr. Flake spent $111,302 as of Nov. 22, 2004, and had $17, 838 cash on hand.)

Should Clean Elections be repealed?

I certainly think it should.

You may run three more times for the Senate. Do you see yourself doing that?

I don’t know how much more I can handle and I don’t know how much more my wife can handle. I’m 69 years old. I’ll be 71 when I finish this term. There are a lot of things I want to do yet in my life. I don’t know… I’ll stay here as along as I feel I’m doing good.

Thank you for your time, senator.

You’re welcome. —

Senate reporter Phil Riske interviewed Mr. Flake on March 15.