The most powerful, unpaid political figure in Arizona for the next decade will either be a teacher, a businessman, an attorney for a public utility, a gun store owner or a psychologist-turned-life coach.

An aide to Gov. Doug Ducey, a former top attorney for the state’s largest utility company and a former attorney at the Goldwater Institute are among 39 applicants for the chair of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Arizona’s energy regulators dug deep into the legal complications surrounding a proposal to open up the state’s electric market to competition.

As fewer candidates choose to run for office using Arizona’s Clean Elections system, lawmakers are sensing the system’s vulnerability and are preparing to deal a death blow.

Goldwater Institute attorney Nick Dranias is adding another line on his résumé – director of Compact for America, a Texas-based nonprofit group whose goal is to convene a constitutional convention for a balanced budget amendment.

A few months ago, the city of Phoenix rolled out a $450,000 taxpayer-funded report showing that local governmental workers were paid 6 percent more in aggregate wages and benefits than private sector workers on average.

The Goldwater Institute, a think tank known for its dogged pursuit of conservative ideals, laid down an ambitious — and combative — agenda at the state Capitol this year.

A handful of elected officials in the Arizona Legislature have repeatedly tried to intimidate and silence Goldwater Institute analysts out of giving testimony in support of or in opposition to legislation this year. In one case, an elected official forced a Goldwater Institute attorney, who asked to speak on behalf of the Institute, to refrain from speaking because she was not a registered lobbyist for the Institute. Although the attorney was later allowed to testify after signing in as representing only herself, the instance demonstrates that certain Arizona legislators want citizens to curtail their First Amendment rights before daring to talk or write about public policy with their representatives.

Responding to a piece containing blatant falsehoods is often difficult – if you rebut each falsehood, you risk legitimizing nonsense. That’s the challenge posed by the opinion piece in the March 16 edition of the Arizona Capitol Times, “Law enforcement not the place for political ideology,” written by Jim Clure, a representative of the government union known as PLEA (Phoenix Law Enforcement Association).

A coalition of unions rallied at the Capitol to oppose a slate of anti-union legislation, warning that the passage of the bills would carry dire consequences for both workers who would lose their rights and lawmakers who would lose their elections.