By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

The Democratic challenger to Rep. John Shadegg , R-Ariz., wants to portray Shadegg’s initial decision to retire as evidence that the seven term lawmaker is burned out in the job, but Shadegg is having none of it.

First-time candidate Bob Lord told CQ Politics that Shadegg’s retirement announcement “let the world know that he doesn’t have his heart in the job anymore.”

“You can’t un-ring that bell,” said Lord, who is a tax lawyer. Shadegg had said in his retirement announcement that he did not intend to become a career politician but then re-entered the race “because a bunch of professional politicians and special interest groups urged him,” Lord asserted.

Shadegg said that was an inaccurate characterization of what happened given the outpouring of support from colleagues and his constituents in Arizona’s 3rd District. “If anything, my heart is in the job now more than ever because people asked me to stay, which is pretty extraordinary,” he said in an interview.

Shadegg added: “I have yet to meet a single member of this Congress who has seen anything like what happened ... when I resigned.”

The congressman said the Republican advantage in the Phoenix-based district was clear, Voter registration in the 3rd District favors Republicans by 15 percentage points and Shadegg beat the registration spread in the 2006 election, although he won a career-low 59 percent of the vote. District voters gave President Bush 58 percent of the vote in 2004 and in Maricopa County, the sole county in the 3rd District, voters gave Bush 53 percent of the vote in 2000 and 57 percent of the vote in 2004.

Maricopa County is the state’s most populous and contains Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe, and parts of the county are encompassed in five other congressional districts.

“Mr. Lord, who is a novice, who’s never run before, may not have looked carefully at these numbers, and maybe he has looked at them and doesn’t want to tell people about them,” Shadegg said of his opponent.

Lord points to different statistics, including the electoral strength of Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano in the district and in Maricopa County, where she won 61 percent of the vote over her Republican opponent, Len Munsil, in 2006. In the neighboring 5th Congressional District, which also is comprised solely of Maricopa County and where Republicans maintain a 14 percentage point advantage, Democrat Harry E. Mitchell unseated Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth with just over 50 percent of the vote in 2006.

Lord also has raised six times more in the cycle-to-date ($613,000) than Shadegg’s other Democratic opponents did for the entire election cycle in the two other competitive races for the 3rd, which he said makes his campaign a credible challenge.

CQ Politics rates the race Republican Favored, indicating Shadegg holds the advantage but that Lord still could win the seat.

In terms of the issues facing 3rd District voters, the two candidates offered entirely different visions.

For Lord, the list included immigration, taxes and the economy, education, energy and the environment. Lord also criticized Shadegg for being opposed to immigration reform efforts. Shadegg was a top opponent to the plan, which Lord described as imperfect but a good step forward.

“He’s been for doing nothing. I’m for taking action,” he said. Lord calls for the border to be secured but also called for a system by which the United States could bring in willing workers for jobs that currently cannot be filled.

Lord called for targeted tuition tax credits for the middle class and for the extension of tax credits for solar power, especially since Arizona has the potential “to be the Middle East in terms of solar energy.” He emphasizes his credentials as a tax lawyer and said he understands that burdensome taxes can hinder private enterprise, describing himself as a business-friendly Democrat in the mold of Napolitano.

Shadegg, meanwhile, pointed to issues based on the national debate – health care and the threat from radical Islam, the overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the overall failures of the Democratic majority.

Shadegg said Lord is going to have to take a position on the health care plans offered by the Democratic presidential candidates, which he described as “single-payer, essentially government-run” systems.

“My opponent’s going to have to embrace one form or the other of those [plans] and I am going to talk openly and directly to the people of the 3rd Congressional District about health care reform, which is a topic I’ve been working on since I got here,” Shadegg said..

“The Democratic majority in the House has continued to represent not the middle of America but the left side of America and my opponent’s going to have to defend that record,” he said.

In their most recent campaign finance filings, Shadegg reported raising $1 million and had $864,000 on hand while Lord had $503,0000 of the $613,000 he has raised left by the end of the year. Independent candidate Annie Loyd also has filed for the race; as of Dec. 31 she reported raising $27,000 with $9,000 on hand by the end of 2007.