Sen. Harry Mitchell is now first and second in command.

The newly elected chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party and assistant Democratic leader is nearing his final year in the Senate says the two positions will not collide.

“Jim [Pederson, former Democrat chairman] was running a multi-million dollar business when he was chairman, and when I was mayor, I was teaching,” said Mr. Mitchell, the long-time Tempe city councilman, mayor, high school government teacher and District 17 senator, who was elected Democratic chairman by acclamation Aug. 20.

He was elected in January as assistant minority leader to Sen. Linda Aguirre, and is term limited in 2006.

Mr. Mitchell said he will have time to handle both posts this year, with the primary goals of electing more Democrats to state offices and passing more Democrat legislation. Republican voter registrations as of the most recent count in July outnumbered Democrat registrations by 5.57 percentage points, and Republicans control the Legislature 56-34.

“We need to convince people with the Democratic message,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It’s in their best interest. He said he agreed with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who spoke Aug. 18 to 750 Democratic state legislators attending the National Conference of State Legislatures in Seattle.

“The last thing America needs is a second Republican Party,” said Mr. Kerry. “We have to go out and fight for the real issues that make a difference in the lives of the American people and we don’t need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party.”

Mr. Mitchell said the party needs to round up “good candidates who are in touch with their districts” to run for the Legislature.

“The districts define the issues, not the party,” he said.

Elected to the Senate in 1999, Mr. Mitchell this past session was one of 10 Senate Democrats who voted against Republican bills more than 100 times.

“They’re not in tune with some of the needs of the state,” he said. “We can make a difference.

“We will continue to keep the doors open without our party and welcome everyone who has been abandoned or left behind by the right,” Mr. Mitchell said in a news release.

Legislators and potential candidates await a state Court of Appeals ruling on legislative district boundaries to be used until the 2010 census. The Independent Redistricting Commission appealed a Superior Court ruling striking down districts drawn by the commission.

Judge Kenneth Fields said the commission failed to follow mandates for competitive districts that voters approved in 1998, the commission appealed the ruling, and oral arguments were held in April.

Mr. Mitchell said he is not counting on a decision that could benefit Democrats and will focus on increasing Democratic registrations and appealing to independent voters.

Former Republican Sen. Slade Mead, who has filed as a Democrat for state superintendent of public instruction, was “well received” by the Democratic State Committee meeting in Flagstaff, Mr. Mitchell said. Mr. Mead often sided with Democrats on education and social issues in his one term in the Senate, suffering scorn from his own party.

Mr. Mitchell said he was “very pleased” to have Mr. Mead in the party, praising him for “the agony he went through doing what he thought was right.”

David Martinez, president of the University of Arizona Young Democrats, was elected the party’s secretary to serve through 2006.

Former chairman Mr. Pederson told Arizona Capitol Times he is a “likely” candidate to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Jon Kyl.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will be the keynote speaker at the state party’s annual awards dinner Sept. 10.

Mr. Mitchell’s brother, Bob, is a former Casa Grande mayor and lost to Sen. Rebecca Rios in the District 23 general election race in 2004 for the Senate.

When Mr. Mitchell, 65, told his wife he had decided on the party chairmanship rather than retiring from politics at the end of his Senate service, she just shook her head, he said. —