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Excerpts from an interview with state Senate President Tim Bee

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Tim Bee faced one of the biggest decisions of his political career in 2006.

With longtime Southern Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe stepping down, Bee was encouraged by fellow Republicans to jump into the race for an open congressional seat in Arizona's 8th District.

Or as one of the senior members of the state Senate, he could stay put, as he was in line to become president of the chamber.

Bee chose the latter.

It was a decision that, in part, reflected his taste for policy over politics. The role would allow him, as the first Senate president from Tucson since the '70s, to negotiate the state budget and set the GOP's agenda for two years.

But it was also a calculation that accounted for what was rightly predicted to be a nasty Republican primary that produced conservative Randy Graf as the party's nominee.

In the wake of an election that eventually handed Kolbe's seat to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords — who now is running as an incumbent — Bee settled into his role at the Senate.

But almost immediately, questions arose about what was next. And those questions would eventually come to dominate his tenure as president.

Bee opted to stay put through it all.

"I felt a real sense of responsibly to pursue the presidency," he said in a recent interview.

But ultimately, Bee's decision to stay in the Legislature while campaigning turned out to have a mixed result.

While it may have kept him in the news throughout 2008, it wasn't always for good reason. And the mix of a rocky legislative session and messy politics at the state Capitol led to a number of complications. But Bee says it was all for a greater good: Fighting for Southern Arizona in a Maricopa County-dominated Legislature.

Now, Bee heads into the final stretch of his bid for Congress, outstripped financially 3 to 1 by Giffords, tied to a party that is on life support, and left to fend for himself against attacks from national Democrats.

Through it all, however, Bee has managed to consolidate Republican support in a way that Graf never could. Supporters hope his reputation in the state Senate, where he brokered deals with Democrats, will win him the support he needs from moderates. And with a slight registration advantage in the district for Republicans, his supporters are hoping for an upset that shocks the Washington prognosticators who have already declared the race for Giffords.

"People always underestimate the underdog," says Bee. "We're working very hard, and we like surprising people."

Finding his path

When Bee graduated from Palo Verde High School in 1988, he was ready to write his ticket. He was valedictorian, editor of the yearbook and enrolled at the University of Arizona on scholarship.

But during his first year at the university, 19-year-old Bee started experiencing arthritic symptoms. His hair started falling out. It was hard for him to keep food down.

After a series of tests, doctors finally diagnosed him with a rare disease called brucellosis.

"It's something I'll always have, and under great stress it gets me again," said Bee, sharing the story publicly for the first time. "But it doesn't hold me back at all."

Bee struggled with the disease for about a decade, starting a printing business to make money in the meantime. But for the kid who was at the top of his class, dropping out of college troubles him to this day.

"It was very hard," he says. "I would love to finish and maybe someday I will. But serving in the Senate, I feel like I've been able to do the things I would have been able to do completing the degree."

After marrying wife Grace in 1994, Bee eventually ran for the state Senate in 2000 and was considered a long shot in a Republican primary bid against Bill McGibbon, a longtime legislator on Tucson's East Side.

"I never saw him," recalls state Rep. Marian McClure, a fellow Republican who ran for the House that same year, of Bee. "People were asking me, 'How's Tim Bee doing?' I didn't have a clue."

As it turns out, McClure said, Bee was "doing what he liked to do. Knocking on doors and talking to people." But he ignored many of the typical Republican meetings and chicken dinners, eventually pulling off a win. It helped that he was filling the seat of his brother Keith Bee.

Once in the Senate, Tim Bee was a quiet but important player. He worked behind the scenes but didn't drum up media coverage or deliver memorable floor speeches.

Even as majority leader, he was respected — but he didn't stand out like some of the vocal characters at the state Capitol.

"He's always been relatively quiet in the really tough budget negotiations," Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano said when Bee was selected Senate president in 2006. "I can't say I've ever really negotiated with him directly."

Making his mark

The first year of Bee's two-session tenure as Senate president was like a honeymoon. Democrats praised him. Republicans seemed content, even as he made the unusual move of inviting Democrats and Napolitano into GOP budget negotiations.

Tucson Democrat Phil Lopes, minority leader in the state House, said during a television interview, Bee at his side, that Bee would make a good candidate for Congress.

After months of flirtation and bolstered by a successful session, Bee formed an exploratory committee for Congress.

But now things were looking more like a marriage on the rocks than a honeymoon.

There were months of accusations from state Democrats, and even Giffords at one point, that Bee was potentially violating a state law requiring officeholders to resign to seek another office. Without a campaign organization to defend himself, some of the criticisms took hold.

Next, the state's escalating budget shortfall gave way to a political clash that left Bee eventually siding with Democrats against most of his party.

And Bee's sponsorship of a ballot initiative to define marriage in the state Constitution resulted in an ugly battle on the last night of the session that left Bee emotionally and physically drained. It might have even resulted in him losing the support of Kolbe, although neither has answered questions about why the support was pulled.

"For this campaign, I would have been much better off to have resigned and focused 100 percent of my efforts on that," Bee says now. "But I made a commitment to my constituents and my caucus that I would stay."

Breaking through

As he talks, it's obvious that Bee thinks Giffords has been given a free ride by the local media during her first term.

"They really didn't talk about the important issues coming up before Congress," Bee says. "Instead they were running stories about her fairy-tale princess wedding. It's almost like the newspapers are running her campaign for her, while they've avoided talking about the really tough issues."

Those tough issues, he says, are ones he'd be better addressing.

On education, Bee says he'd personally sponsor changes to the No Child Left Behind Act.

He's crafted a more conservative immigration stance than Giffords. He supports elements of a comprehensive package — like a guest-worker plan — but does not favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

But the question remains as to whether Bee has made the case to voters that the incumbent should be booted.

He lambasted Giffords' use of her congressional franking privilege to pay for full-color mailers to homes in District 8, but he says he would use the practice too — just not as much. His latest ad goes after Giffords on earmarks, but Bee has stopped short of saying he would never use the earmarks process if elected. He would opt instead, he says, for pushing priorities through the normal appropriations process.

A Bee win might also come in a national climate that leaves him in a small Republican minority. But that's OK, he says.

"I don't think this Congress has done much of anything, that's my biggest criticism," Bee says.

"I think absolutely you can make a difference as a freshman; it's a matter of whether you're focused on policy or not."

If Bee wins, Grace and the couple's six children will relocate to Washington.

And during an interview outside a Northwest Side coffee shop, Bee was briefly interrupted by a female passer-by with some words of encouragement: "I hope you kick her butt."