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Office of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, via Associated Press Gabrielle Giffords in March of last year. Close friends in Washington are taking steps to ensure the political standing of the Arizona congresswoman, who faces re-election in 2012.

As Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona continues to make progress toward recovery from a gunshot wound to the head, an uncomfortable question is beginning to seep into the political conversation in Arizona and Washington.

What does the future hold?

Ms. Giffords was just beginning her third term in the House when she was was shot on Jan. 8 during a meet-and-greet event in her district. She remains in a Houston area rehabilitation facility as she works to recover, a process that, in spite of reports of her early progress, could be slow and difficult.

For weeks, there has been nearly no talk about her political future as members from both parties merely said they expect her to return to Washington whenever she is healthy enough to do so.

Now some of her closest friends in Washington are beginning to take steps to ensure that Ms. Giffords is politically strong as well. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are hosting a fund-raiser for Ms. Giffords next month. The money could be used for Ms. Giffords to mount a re-election bid in 2012.

“We want to make sure that when she does come back, she’s not starting from scratch,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in an interview Wednesday night. She said the fund-raiser would help Ms. Giffords be in the
“strongest possible position to run for re-election.”

And friends are also acknowledging a different possibility, prompted in part by the abrupt announcement last week that Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, would not seek re-election in 2012. Those close to Ms. Giffords said she had begun to talk about the possibility of running for the Senate before she was shot.

“It’s something that she talked about, but not something that she talked about in any great detail,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “When she does come back, she will go through the same process that everyone who considers running for higher office does.”

The Arizona Democratic Party chairman, Andrei Cherny, told The Washington Post that “it goes without saying that even before the attack, she was at the top of everyone’s list.”

It is far too early in Ms. Giffords’s recovery to have serious conversations about a statewide candidacy, Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. And she stressed that before the shooting, the congresswoman from Arizona was focused primarily on representing her district and winning re-election in November 2012.

But even a mention that Ms. Giffords had been interested in running for the Senate has consequences for the Democratic Party in Arizona, and nationally, as the race to replace Mr. Kyl takes shape.

Mr. Kyl’s departure offers Democrats a rare opportunity to pick up a seat in a state where voting behavior during presidential races has been trending in their favor. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, won his own state that year, and won re-election to the Senate in November. But senior Democratic officials have said they believe the rapid growth in the state’s Hispanic population is making it friendlier territory for them.

However, other potential candidates, like Janet Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security secretary and the state’s former governor, are all but frozen out of a public conversation about a possible run for now. And state Democratic Party officials are understandably wary of doing anything that might be interpreted as offensive to Ms. Giffords.

The dynamics are different on the Republican side, where Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona has already announced he will run for Mr. Kyl’s seat. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who gained national fame for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, is reported to be actively considering a run as well.

What remains unknown is how long Democrats can wait for Ms. Giffords to improve. The election is almost two years away, but a competitive Senate contest will be very costly, and any contender will have plenty of campaigning to do.

There are precedents in other states that could help guide the Democratic Party as it carefully navigates the delicate issues of Ms. Giffords’s recovery and the party’s interests.

In South Dakota, for example, the state’s senior senator, Tim Johnson, had bleeding in the brain in December 2006 and underwent emergency surgery. He remained in a rehabilitation hospital for months and returned to the Senate for the first time nearly a year later, in September 2007.

Similarly with Ms. Giffords, colleagues helped raise money for Mr. Johnson while he was recuperating. And in 2008, he won another six-year term in the Senate.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that the fund-raiser for Ms. Giffords would be a reception that will take place in Washington. She said there is “no specific ask” in terms of the amount of money donors might contribute.

“We are encouraging people to come and join us and celebrate Gabby and make whatever contributions they are comfortable making,” she said.

Ms. Giffords had $285,000 cash on hand in her campaign account at the end of 2010, according to Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

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3:22 p.m. | Updated PHOENIX — Arizona’s attorney general, Tom Horne, was not amused by the undercover investigation that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City recently conducted at a Phoenix gun show, in which undercover detectives found two gun sellers apparently violating federal law.

Mr. Horne criticized Mr. Bloomberg for not notifying the Arizona State Police in advance of the investigation. “The fact that no such notification was made indicates this so-called sting is nothing less than a public relations stunt,” Mr. Horne said in a statement.

He said that the mayor ought to focus on what he called New York City’s “skyrocketing crime rate.”

“According to the most recent F.B.I. statistics, violent crime in New York City increased significantly in 2010 compared to data from 2009,” he said. “Robbery went up 3.9 percent, forcible rape rose 13.9 percent, aggravated assault increased 8.8 percent and murder rose 12.3 percent. Clearly, the good men and women of the New York City police department have more pressing crimes to investigate than alleged violations at a gun show 2,400 miles away.”

Aides to the mayor said that private detectives who were former law enforcement officers carried out the video investigations, not current police officers. Jason Post, a Bloomberg aide, also disputed the crime figures issued by Mr. Horne. He said that New York is the safest big city in the nation, safer than Phoenix, according to the per capita rate of major felonies tracked by the F.B.I.

As for whether New York ought to be investigating out-of-state gun shows, Mr. Post said that 90 percent of the guns recovered in crimes in New York City come from out of state.

The investigators participating in the mayor’s videotaped episode bought three guns, two of them after telling the Arizona sellers that they probably could not pass a federal background check. Such checks are not required for private sales, but private sellers are forbidden from selling to people they reasonably suspect could not pass a federal background check.

In a third purchase, the undercover investigators bought a Glock pistol like the one used in the Jan. 8 Tucson shooting. That purchase was legal, the mayor’s aides said, but was intended to show how easy it was to acquire such a gun with no background check.

The operators of the Crossroads of the West gun show, held on Jan. 23 in Phoenix, was also angry at the undercover buys. “These forays into America’s heartland committing blatant acts to entrap otherwise innocent gun owners is an unlawful scheme that is created by Bloomberg’s task force,” the company said in a statement.

Gov. Jan Brewer shrugged off Mr. Bloomberg’s investigation to reporters on Monday. “We believe our laws are fair and just in the state of Arizona,” she said.

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In her defense of the health care law, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, said Wednesday that the woman who grabbed the second magazine out of the hands of the gunman accused of shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others had come to see Ms. Giffords in Tucson that day to urge her to fight Republican efforts to repeal the law.

“Heed the words of Pat Maisch, heed the words of millions needing health care,” said Ms. Wasserman Schultz on the floor of the House Wednesday morning, hours before Republican leaders had scheduled a vote on the repeal measure. Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that Ms. Maisch, 61, had come to tell Ms. Giffords that she found the title of the repeal bill — ”Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” — to be “disingenuous” and to urge her to fight it.

According to law enforcement accounts, Ms. Maisch hit the ground when the gunman began shooting at the crowd gathered in the Safeway parking lot to meet with Ms. Giffords, then lunged forward and grabbed the second magazine from his hands as he was trying to reload.

Members of the House began debate Tuesday on the merits of a vote to repeal the health care overhaul — which seems almost certain to pass in the House but will most likely not be considered by the Senate — with Republicans making their case for repeal and Democrats against. They were expected to vote on the repeal Wednesday afternoon.

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Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press The flag flew at half-staff at the Capitol on Sunday.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords remains in critical condition after being shot in the head at a meet-and-greet in her Tucson-area neighborhood Saturday. Police now say that 20 people in total were shot and that six people were killed in that shooting, including John M. Roll, Arizona’s chief federal judge.

This live blog will try to capture the latest developments throughout the day.

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This ought to outrage dog lovers all over the free world. A stray dog, adopted by an American soldier after helping prevent a suicide bomber from inflicting mass casualties at a U.S. barracks in Afghanistan, has been euthanized by mistake in Arizona, the New York Times reported. Target, a shepherd mix, was one celebrated mutt [...]

TUCSON — Nearly two weeks after Election Day, election officials reported that Arizona’s ballot initiative allowing medical marijuana for people with chronic or debilitating diseases was narrowly approved by voters.

Proposition 203’s passage makes Arizona the 15th state to have approved a medical marijuana law.

Once state election officials certify the results, the Arizona Department of Health Services has up to four months to set up regulations to handle the distribution of medical marijuana. That is roughly the amount of time that Theodore Marin, 61, who was diagnosed with leukemia last year, has been given by doctors to live.

“A lot of people don’t understand what the effects of the chemo are — a real loss of appetite, the aches and fatigue that you feel,” said Mr. Marin, whose daughter, Maveny, recently moved up her wedding so he could participate. “You try to put up a good front for everybody, but there are times when the wife knows it — something’s wrong.”

The last time he smoked marijuana was 35 years ago as a young Marine during the Vietnam War. If his pain worsens and the new legal distribution system allowing individuals to buy up to two and a half ounces of cannabis is set up in time, Mr. Marin plans to use it again.

“I’m glad it passed,’’ he said of the ballot measure, which won by just 4,341 votes out of more than 1.67 million ballots counted. “I will use it. I know I will in the future, if I can get O.K.’d. Use it to my benefit, not abusing it.”

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