Rep. Shooter would like to request peace and quiet

Shut up already! ... Long, late night sessions don’t go down well with Don Shooter, new to the ranks of the House of Representatives.

As speaker after speaker rose to debate a host of election bills Thursday night, Shooter’s last nerve short circuited.

“Is this the only time you guys get to talk?” the Yuma Republican asked his House colleagues. “Do your husbands and wives not let you talk?”

People giggled, but Shooter was not done. Not everyone has to say something about every bill, he added. He was so beside himself, he said, that he almost hanged himself off the third-floor balcony, except he couldn’t find any volunteers to pull away the chair. (He promptly got some joking offers of aid.)

Turns out the talkative House is quite the switch from the more-sedate Senate, where Shooter served for six years.

His rant concluded, a quiet descended on the House. For about a nano second.

Then Rep. Randy Friese, D-Tucson, asked permission to speak, triggering groans.

“Welcome to the House, Mr. Shooter,” said the verbose Friese.

» Seeing the light ... Just in time for a vote on a bill to ban traffic cameras, Rep. Becky Nutt saw a bright flash.

It wasn’t a UFO — at least she doesn’t think so — the Clifton Republican said. More likely, it was a speed camera. The proof will come soon enough, if she gets a ticket in the mail.

The experience was enough to seal her decision to vote in favor of House Bill 2525, which bans photo enforcement everywhere. It already is outlawed on state highways.

Nutt said cameras remove the human element from traffic enforcement.

“If there had been an officer, I could have explained what I was doing,” Nutt said, adding that might have spared her a ticket.

She said she was driving in a strange location in the north Valley, listening to directions from her GPS on a dark street where she couldn’t see a posted speed-limit sign. The flash startled her.

Nutt recounted her story as the House debated Rep. Travis Grantham’s photo-enforcement ban. Her experience might have helped: The Gilbert Republican’s bill passed with only one vote to spare..

» Quote/tweet of the week “I believe a riot should be stopped before it starts. We can now go after organizing groups that are preparing and planning and nip it in the bud before they destroy our community, before they injure our citizens, before they destroy our reputation.” — Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, during debate over a controversial bill to crack down on some public protests.

Compiled by Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl and Alia Beard Rau. Get the latest at politics.azcentral.com.