As he enters his final year in the Legislature, Senate Minority Leader David Bradley is in a contemplative mood.

The Arizona Senate has reinstated a former Democratic policy adviser who won a federal discrimination lawsuit over being paid less than white male employees with similar jobs.

A fired Senate staffer said Friday she hopes to go back to work even though it would mean working with – and for – some of the same people who a federal court jury said discriminated against her.

The Senate handed every Democratic policy staffer a raise of at least $10,000 at the end of August, a month after a federal jury awarded $1 million to a former Democratic policy adviser who argued she was underpaid.

The Arizona Senate fired a former Democratic policy advisor because she complained that she was being paid less because of her race and gender, a federal court ruled Friday evening.

A Republican lawmaker is again asking voters to give Arizona a lieutenant governor, a role that would supersede the secretary of state as first in the line of succession for the governor’s office.

No election cycle would be complete without a cadre of candidates preaching about the importance of working across the aisle. But that line will really be put to the test in the Arizona House of Representatives in 2019.

New figures Saturday evening show Democrat U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has amassed 1,048,655 votes. That gives her a lead over Republican U.S. Rep. Martha McSally that now approaches 30,000.

The latest returns from the state's two largest counties has given Kyrsten Sinema the lead in her bid for U.S. Senate -- barely.

Reliable power, affordable water and good jobs are essential elements of Arizona’s productive economy. Without these fundamentals, not much else matters.