With the election cycle behind her, Maria Weeg announced that she will resign as executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, effective at the end of this month.

Weeg, a native of Pocatello, Idaho, said she plans to move back to her home state, where she has many friends and relatives.

"After every election cycle it's time to kind of sit back and reflect a little bit and evaluate. I've been thinking about it for quite some time and, you know, decided I was ready to take a little bit of a break and weigh my options and make some decisions about next steps," she said.

Her tenure as executive director began in 2007 and lasted through an election cycle in which Arizona Democrats raised more money and registered more new voters than Republicans, but fell short of predictions that they would gain a majority in the state House of Representatives. The party actually lost seats in both chambers of the Legislature.

Weeg said her decision to resign was not influenced by the election results and pointed to numerous other electoral victories the party had in 2008, including winning two seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission and one in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as retaining the congressional seats that Democrats Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords took from Republicans in 2006.

"(There were) high hopes on the legislative level, but I feel like we need to … not lose track of the incredible wins that we had. When we went into this election cycle, when I got to Arizona, people were saying to me, ‘There's no way you're going to reelect Harry Mitchell. There's no way you will reelect Gabrielle Giffords. And you're crazy to think you would ever pick up a Corporation Commission seat,'" Weeg said. "So I think it's important to say yeah, we had some disappointments on the legislative level, but we had some incredible wins."

Weeg had previously served as executive director for the Idaho Democratic Party and had worked on several political campaigns.

"Politics and campaigns are really, really demanding, and so I would say it's much more about kind of being at a point in my life where I'm trying to decide kind of what the next steps look like. Is it politics? Is it the nonprofit world? And I just want to take a little time to figure that out. And I'm away from my family and my friends," said Weeg, adding that she would like to finish the doctorate program in political science at Idaho State University.

Weeg's decision came just days after the newly elected chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, Paul Eckerstrom, announced his resignation. Eckerstrom, the former chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, had held the post for just two weeks after winning a last-minute challenge against incumbent chairman Don Bivens at the party's annual convention on Jan. 24. Eckerstrom said he realized he could not live in Tucson, where his family and job as a public defender are, while running a party based in Phoenix.

Some party faithful who were upset over the election results directed their discontent at Bivens and Weeg, and when Eckerstrom won his upset bid, some speculated that Weeg would be ousted by the new chairman. After his resignation, however, Eckerstrom said he had no plans to do so, and said much of the blame being laid at Weeg's doorstep was undeserved.

Weeg said Bivens' loss to Eckerstrom had no bearing on her decision to step down.

"I had been talking to Don about this decision prior to that race," she said.

Weeg said she is optimistic about the future of the Arizona Democratic Party, especially considering the depth of budget cuts recently approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

"I think that Democrats in Arizona are really committed to moving ahead, and I think more than ever in seeing these draconian cuts that the Republicans in the Legislature are making, slashing school budgets and university budgets," she said. "They're taking programs out of Arizona that will take decades to repair. Very, very irresponsible cuts, and that's got people motivated. I don't think that you're going to see much of a blip in our momentum."

The party's executive officers will choose an interim executive director on Feb. 13.