Arizona Senate censures Republican Wendy Rogers for 'conduct unbecoming of a senator'

PHOENIX — State senators decided Tuesday to do something they haven’t done in decades: censure one of their own.

By a 24-3 margin, the GOP-led chamber voted to censure Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, for “conduct unbecoming of a senator.”

The specifics included “publicly issuing and promoting social media and video messaging encouraging violence against and punishment of American citizens.”

Rogers spoke to a white supremacist group late last month, calling for public hangings.

She followed that with a last-ditch effort to avoid censure by making political threats to fellow Republicans.

Rogers lashed out, calling the official rebuke an attack on free speech.

“I do not apologize,” she said. “I will not back down.”

Rogers claimed that the “hundreds of thousands of people” she represents are “with me and they want me to be their voice.”

She accused Senate GOP leadership of “colluding with Democrats.”

But Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said that’s not the case.

“This is not a Democratic or a Republican thing,” she said, saying every lawmaker makes his or her own decision.

Fann also said this isn’t about interfering with anyone’s First Amendment rights.

“But what we do not condone is members threatening each other to ruin each other, to incite violence, to call us Communists,” she said. “We do not do that to each other.”

Rogers had tweeted, “I will personally destroy the career of any Republican who partakes in the gaslighting of me simply because of the color of my skin or opinion about a war I don’t want to send our kids to die in.”

Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, said many senators were offended by that threat.

Rogers tried other tactics to convince colleagues to vote against the move.

For example, she directed a Twitter posting to Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, pointing out that she supported his measure to greatly expand eligibility for vouchers of state funds for parents to use at private, parochial and home schooling. Boyer was not impressed.

“So, I should stay silent on your unhinged speeches and tweets, Wendy Rogers, because you once voted for one of my bills?” he responded. “No thanks.”

Just hours before Fann scheduled the censure vote, Rogers told her followers that “today is the day where we find out if the Communists in the GOP throw the sweet grandma under the bus for being white.”

Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, said Rogers’ public face belies her self-description.

“When somebody shows you who they are, believe them,” Rios said, saying Rogers “has proudly shown us who she is.”

“It’s not a sweet grandmother,” Rios said. “It’s someone who has gleefully called white nationalists ‘patriots,’ called for hanging political enemies, called (Ukranian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.”

Rogers spoke on Feb. 25 to the America First Political Action Conference, a group of white nationalists, where she said “we need to build more gallows.”

“If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” she said.

She also praised the conference host, Nick Fuentes, who opened it by seeking applause from the crowd for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Shope said that, if nothing else, elected officials should not speak to such groups.

Rogers herself has made her feelings clear about the war and Zelenskyy, calling him “a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.” She did so after Vladimir Putin said he was invading to promote “the demilitarization and de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Both Zelenskyy and Soros are Jewish.

When the Anti-Defamation League, in a posting, asked Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to condemn her “anti-Semitic, racist, violent language,” she responded, “Oh shaddup.”

But Rogers isn’t new to stoking controversy.

“I like Indians and I like Redskins,” she tweeted last summer. “I like Aunt Jemima and I like Uncle Ben. I like Robert E. Lee and I like Stonewall Jackson.”

And in January, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, she retweeted a posting urging people to “celebrate” Confederate generals.

Sen. Lisa Otondo, D-Yuma, derided Rogers’ claim that lawmakers were interfering with her First Amendment rights.

“Freedom of speech does not give you the right to be a bully, to dehumanize people,” she said. “It does not allow you to have slander, many other things.”

Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, who supported the censure, said it would have been nice had there been a way to settle the issue in a “family discussion.”

But he said that isn’t possible, as there are no parents who can impose discipline. And that requires all members to consider the greater wellbeing of the Senate, he said.

“The body comes first, the unit comes first,” Leach said, calling it “a terrible vote to have to take.”

The Senate’s action stood in sharp contrast to Ducey’s.

He was asked last week, after many of the senator’s comments had been widely circulated, whether he regretted having his political action committee put $500,000 into the 2020 election to help Rogers.

Ducey said his concerns are different. “What I need as a governor are governing majorities,” he responded, noting that Rogers provides the crucial 16th Republican vote in the 30-member chamber.

“So that’s what I’ve wanted to do, is move my agenda forward,” Ducey said. “I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and (Rogers) is still better than her (Democratic) opponent Felicia French.”

Rogers, in response, tweeted, “Thank you, Governor.”

But Ducey had a decidedly different take following the Senate vote.

“Antisemitic and hateful language has no place in Arizona,” he said in a prepared statement. “I believe the vote taken today by the Arizona Senate sends a clear message: Rhetoric like this is unacceptable.”

Ducey also said late Tuesday that “any statement supporting Russia’s action in Ukraine is not only ill-advised, but wrong and dangerous.”

Voting against censure were Sens. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, and Rogers. Not voting were David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista; Victoria Steele, D-Tucson; and Kelly Townsend, R-Apache Junction.

The Senate vote cames a day after two Maricopa County supervisors, both Republicans, condemned Rogers for what they said is her “hateful rhetoric.” Those supervisors, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, also called her out for “apologizing for Putin and condemning U.S. allies.”

There is no record of the Senate censuring a member for at least four decades, an action that takes only a simple majority.

Senators did vote to expel Sen. Carolyn Walker, D-Phoenix, in 1991.

Walker was one of 11 lawmakers caught up in what was dubbed “AzScam,” taking money from someone posing as a lobbyist to get them to vote to legalize casino gaming in Arizona. All the others resigned; it took a two-thirds vote to oust Walker.