What will surprise me next session, I asked Colorado Senate President Kevin Grantham over country fried steak and gravy New Year’s weekend.

He looked to his left for a long pause inside the Waffle Wagon in Canon City.”Probably the same things that will surprise me,” he said.

Grantham runs the zoo in the upper chamber of the statehouse, the king of the jungle, if you will, but that doesn’t mean he can think like the monkeys. What lawmakers do, even his fellow Republicans, once the session starts on Jan. 10 is anybody’s guess.

There is a well-circulated perception of a cloud hanging over this session. Four members – two in the House, two in the Senate, two Republicans, two Democrats – face sexual harassment allegations. The issue is compounded and confounding by lawmakers and lobbyists taking sides.

The Gold Dome runs on relationships, and right now a lot of people are suspicious and distrustful of one another.

There are five legislators this session who are running for state treasurer in November. That could play out behind the scenes between friends and allies within their own party. For instance, look at who gets assigned high-profile bills that primary voters might notice remember in June. That could tell us a lot about which candidates their caucus leaders support.

For instance, Rep. Polly Lawrence has been a GOP champion on transportation issues, and she’s the ranking Republican on the Senate Transportation Committee. She’s also one of the smartest and most committed lawmakers under the Gold Dome. If she doesn’t continue to lead the charge on that high-profile issue for House Republicans, then I smell politics cooking.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Steve Lebsock’s run for treasurer is hobbled by the fact some members of his own party want him to resign or try to force them out over sexual harassment charges lodged mhy another member, Faith Winter who is running for state Senate in a race that could flip the upper chamber’s majority. If Lebsock feels squeezed out, he has party secrets he might be willing to spill.

Rep. Dave Young of Greeley also is in the Democratic primary for treasurer. Everybody loves Dave, and, moreover, he sits on the powerful Joint Budget Committee. Politically, it literally pays to be his friend.

On top of those fractures, there are nine Republicans and nine Democrats running for governor, about three on each side that could drive wedges between political friendships.

Grantham took the viewpoint of fake news reporter Roseanne Roseannadanna from “Saturday Night Live” in the 1970s: It’s always something.

“We’ll just keep our heads down and keep working,” he said. “You have to, because there’s always outside noise. Granted, this is a bit different, but we have work to do. That hasn’t changed.”

It’s tricky. In the Senate, both of the accused are Republicans,  Randy Baumgardner, who chairs the powerful and critical transportation committee, and Jack Tate, a swing vote on the Senate Finance Committee which handles spending bills.

Those are political tigers you don’t kick around without good reason.

“I hope we can get past it,” Senate Democratic Leader Lucia Guzman said of sexual harassment, if a Friday night phone call to discuss Sen. Cheri Jahn of Wheat Ridge, who had just left the party to become unaffiliated.

As usual, I turned to my close friend Lynn Bartels for perspective. She’s the state’s best political reporter emeritus, who now works for the Secretary of State’s Office.

She said the most similar session to this year that she could remember was maybe 2006, the session after Referendum C passed to create a timeout from the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights spending cap for five years to pay for a whole bunch of things, including transportation.

Some Republicans supported it to the resentment of others.

Related or not, House Republican leader Joe Stengel was accused of ethics violations related to off-session pay and resigned his leadership position midway through the session. That same month Sen. Deanna Hannah resigned when it became evident she wouldn’t get enough Democratic support after she allegedly asked for “reparations” because Realtors endorsed her opponent.

“It’s hard to compare one session to another,” Lynn cautioned me. “Legislative sessions are like siblings; they’re related but they’re different. You can’t even predict what will happen in a session at the beginning of it.

“Things you never think of will wind up being the big story.”

(Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that Joe Stengel resigned his leadership position, not from the legislature.)