Arizona lawmakers Shooter, Montenegro want to swap seats

Kumbaya, not confrontation ... So it turns out there will be no Shooter-Montenegro showdown in the GOP primary next year. Instead, two of the lawmakers representing Legislative District 13 have agreed to trade places, assuming the voters are OK with the seat swap.

Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, and Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, announced they’ve agreed to run for the office the other holds in 2016. Montenegro is term limited in the Arizona House of Representatives, and his hopes of making a congressional bid crumbled when it became clear the current congressional map will not get reworked this decade.

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So what’s an aspiring public servant to do? Look across the Capitol courtyard. Next year, it will be Montenegro running for the state Senate, and Shooter for the House.

“It would have been a real loss for our district to lose that seniority and experience,” Shooter said in a statement, referring to Montenegro’s eight years in the Legislature.

The move means, if elected to the House, Shooter would be relinquishing his role as Senate Appropriations Committee chairman. Whether he could snag a similar spot in the House is unclear. But first, there’s that little business of winning a primary and a general election.