Sen. Thayer Verschoor, a Republican from Gilbert, returned to the Senate after a tough primary last year. One of the most conservative members of the Legislature, he fought hard for the repeal of the state equalization property tax. That battle was lost this year after Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill carrying the repeal language.

Now Verschoor wants to see the issue back on the table if the Legislature were to convene into a special session.

Verschoor, who was Senate majority leader last year, is serving his last term and is exploring a run for the Treasurer’s Office.

Verschoor, who grew up in Wellton, became a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1981. He then joined the U.S. Army in 1983, serving as a nuclear, biological and chemical specialist and as a paratrooper.

In this interview, Verschoor reminisced about his time in the Army, speculated where he might have been if he had stayed in the military and told of jungle training in Panama.

If you had stayed in the Army, can you imagine where you would be now?
It’s kind of interesting because I was actually talking with my wife about that the other day – if I had stayed in the Army. There’s a lot of different paths I could have taken. But if I had stayed in the Army, I don’t know if I would have gotten back here. Obviously, right after I got out back in 1991 was when Desert Storm happened. I started serving in 1986, so I would have been probably still on active duty when the Second Gulf War started here, and I’d probably still be in (the Army).

Do you think you can top what U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake just did? Do you know what he did?
No.

He spent a week on one of the islands in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific with just a mask, fins and a pole-spear, and he had a desalination machine. He ate only coconut meat, crabs and fish.
I don’t know that I can top that. I spent at least a whole week out in the Panamanian jungle, where we were out there doing opposition forces (training). I could tell you some fun stories about some of that stuff.

Our job basically was to play the enemy for some of the other infantry guys going through the school for the first week that I was there.

They set us up in a guerilla camp in the jungle and we would wait for the infantry guys to look around and find us and then attack us, and then we’d fight back and forth. One time, we were at this place called Devil’s Beach. We were pretty close to the beach there. It was getting time for these guys to come out and find us, but the instructor saw us out at the beach and said, “Hey, you know what, you guys just stay out here and we we’ll have them come attack you here over at the beach instead.” So we were sitting there and we knew that we were supposed to get attacked. And so they came sneaking. And there was kind of this creek that’s flowing through the jungle that comes out to the ocean, right there where the beach opens up. They weren’t very good. (Laughs).

And so I’m watching them sneak up, and this one guy – and of course they were loaded with ammunition and everything – and he was walking and all of a sudden he just disappeared in the water. And all that was left was his hat floating up. And so I think I ran over and got him out because he just fell into a hole that was probably a good 10 feet deep.

If you were to grade the Legislature this year, what grade would you give it in a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 as failing?
It is a tough year. I am not sure that you can grade it per se because of the extraordinary circumstances. I mean you’d almost have to grade it on a curve.

I think (one) of the things that I have concerns about the way this session has gone is I don’t feel like we finished things up properly.
We don’t have a balanced budget. There’s just this unfinished business. I don’t think we’ve dealt with the deficit the way it needs to be dealt with.

I just kind of have this feeling you’re just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, which obviously is going to be pretty tough times when the federal money isn’t going to be there anymore.

How did you reconcile your conservative leanings with support for a tax package that includes the sales tax referral?
It was a whole package that had reductions in it that, you know, would actually help the state. I mean you were looking at a $400-million reduction in the income tax. I think that was a great part of the stimulus package that we could get out there to attract business, to keep business and to help small businesses grow because, I mean, it was both on the businesses side and the individual side.

You know a lot of CEOs, a lot of corporate types, when they are looking where they want to go, they are going to look not just where the company’s bottom line is, but where their own bottom line is going to be. And so I think that overall package, which was actually scored as a tax reduction by a couple of tax groups – the Free Enterprise Club, Americans for Prosperity – in reality, it was a tax reduction, where you had a bump in taxes but then overall you had this long term reduction, which would help attract business, would help stimulate the economy and get people back to work because they would have more money in their pocket.

Sen. Al Melvin essentially blamed Ron Gould and Pamela Gorman for the budget mess because of their unwillingness to compromise on the sales tax issue. Melvin identified a recurring problem in what he calls the right wing of your caucus. Can I get your take on his assessment?
My assessment would be is that the problem was a communication problem. I don’t think that the time on task was there. There wasn’t the communication that I thought was needed to kind of bring people on board, to give people ownership.

When you are forming a budget, you kind of have to try and give ownership, give them part of that responsibility, and that opportunity was missed.

Blame is a tricky thing because it is easy to point fingers, you know.

And I would never do that. I tried to avoid doing that because we have got to work together and, unfortunately, even doing that makes it harder to work together in the future.

As far as finding common ground, it seems that the perception is that the Legislature is being pulled from all directions and that people are so far off as far as their beliefs that it is almost impossible to bridge those gaps. It seems like in your caucus, the impression is that there is one wing on the one end and there is another wing on the other end, and there are very few in the middle so that is difficult to pull those ends and come closer to common ground.
I think there are more people in the middle. You know, you saw budgets get passed out of here with 16 and 31. It didn’t have the governor on board, so that was vetoed. So to say that you didn’t have that commonality – I think that it was there. I think that it was proven by (passing) a budget.

We passed out an ‘09 fix. We came back several times and we passed out fixes for that. Then we passed out the FY10 budget a couple of times.

So the work was done there. And that’s what we have to build on. You have to take those successes and you have to continue to build on those successes, and I believe that that’s where we will be at.

When you say build on those successes, do you mean finding common ground within your own caucus? Or do you think you should start reaching out to Democrats as a caucus?
Well, I think you should start reaching out to Democrats. Whether they want it to be as a caucus, as a whole, or not – that’s their decision.

I think there are plenty of members in the Democratic caucus who you can reach out to, who I have reached to in the past. If they chose to take a caucus position, I understand that completely. That makes it harder to work with them.

How is your relationship with Senate President Bob Burns?
I think my relationship with Bob is pretty good. President Burns and I, we have two different styles. I think that has become very apparent as the session began and as the session came to a close. I think most people would recognize that.

Again, I’d look back at where we’ve had successes working together, and that is where we need to go back and build on those. He is the president of the Senate, and I support that. And, you know, I think I’ve learned some things this session. I mean, we tried some things that I was in favor, like the moratorium on the hearings. I would tell you that in my experience, I would not do that again. I don’t know if that’s what he is (planning). I hope that he is not planning on doing that again.

I don’t think there is any support for doing that again in your caucus.
The idea was to try and get people on the budget sooner so these bills would get heard. But it didn’t work that way. The idea was maybe, you know, if you have less time to hear bills, fewer bills would be heard.
That didn’t work out that way. So, quite frankly, just none of it worked out the way (it was supposed to). So that experiment has been had – we’ve done it. Let us learn from it and not make those mistakes again.

Regarding the Arizona Budget Commission, can you provide an update of the progress you are making?
Again, there are 130 agencies, and there are some very big agencies.

There are some big agencies that are bigger than the other 125 agencies combined.

Where we are at is kind of getting some of the groundwork laid. In the meantime, we have had an opportunity to look closer at a couple of agencies that people have brought information to us.

What is going to be interesting in this process is while we are looking at these agencies, the status quo is no longer there. I mean you’ve got the governor who has asked these agencies to come up with a plan to reduce 15 percent of their (budget). So I mean there are some things out there that would dramatically change the landscape of what you are looking at. So, you know, we’re going to deal with that as we go forward.