What to know about Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers and the latest controversy surrounding her

Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, a Trump-supporting election-conspiracy advocate and one of the country's prominent far-right-wing state lawmakers, launched back to the forefront in Arizona news after she filed a court-approved restraining order against a reporter who rang her doorbell. Rogers also claimed she was worried what Camryn Sanchez was "capable of" because Sanchez persisted in asking some questions on the state Senate floor after Rogers had "rebuffed" her.

Who is Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers?

Rogers, 68, is a nationally known, far-right politician and prolific fundraiser who's in her second term as an Arizona senator. She's an Oath Keeper, election denier and QAnon promoter who also has faced accusations of antisemitism. She's drawn scorn from Democrats and sometimes even from her Republican colleagues.

Most of her GOP peers in the Senate voted to censure Rogers last year for comments that included a desire to see her political enemies hanged; she also was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee after an enigmatic comment about a racist's massacre of Black people at a Buffalo, New York, store in 2022. The ethics probe went nowhere, and Rogers was reelected to her second term in November.

In her first month in office in 2021, one of Rogers' staffers filed an ethics complaint against her that claimed she harassed him at work by cursing at him, body-shaming him and making negative remarks about his family members, among other things. Polloni also filed a $500,000 workplace harassment lawsuit against Rogers that was settled in late 2022; the settlement terms were never disclosed, but both sides had to pay their own attorneys' fees.

The Arizona Supreme Court sided with Rogers in 2002 by dismissing a case filed by a modeling agency that sued her for alleged defamation in a political ad she aired during an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2018.

Rogers was not an overnight success as a politician. A pioneering female pilot who flew tanker planes, Rogers and her husband started a Tempe home inspection business after they retired from the Air Force in the late 1990s. She ran for Congress or the state Legislature unsuccessfully for 10 years in districts that included her home in Tempe. In 2020, she beat one of the Legislature's most conservative lawmakers, Sylvia Allen, who complained that Rogers had listed a Flagstaff mobile home as her main address in order to win in a more conservative district.

'Baseless and unconstitutional': Arizona newspaper to fight Sen. Wendy Rogers' restraining order

What is the latest controversy involving Rogers?

Rogers is now receiving attention for filing a court-approved restraining order on April 19 against Sanchez, a reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times who covers the state Senate.

In a petition to the Flagstaff Justice Court, Rogers complained that Sanchez rang doorbells at her homes in Tempe and Chandler on April 18, and that Sanchez also had once persisted in asking her questions on the Senate floor. Magistrate Judge Amy Criddle signed the order, which threatens Sanchez with arrest if she goes back to Rogers' homes.

Capitol Times Publisher Michael Gorman said in a statement about the injunction against harassment that Sanchez was working on an investigative article about where the state senator's residence actually is and that the newspaper plans to challenge the court order.

Where does Rogers own residences?

Public records show that Rogers and her husband, Hal Kunnen, own three homes. Two are single-family residences including a 2,600-square-foot home in Tempe and one they recently purchased near Chandler Stellar Airpark, which includes a small hangar for a private airplane.

By contrast, the home Rogers lists as her primary residence for her Legislature job is a 708-square-foot mobile home in Flagstaff she and Kunnen own.

Why does it matter where she lives?

Arizona law requires lawmakers to live in the districts they represent in the Legislature. Even with her Flagstaff home, Rogers almost lost out on the chance to successfully run for office when the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission drew new borderlines for legislative districts. In a last-minute change, a Republican member of the commission suggested moving the line for Legislative District 7 a few blocks, which he said was to help Native American voters by boosting their concentration in a neighboring Democratic district.

The change kept Rogers' home in the Republican-leaning district; she could not have won in the neighboring district, nor in districts that include her Tempe and Chandler homes. Nothing ever came of an Arizona Democratic Party request for an investigation into the change.

According to the Capitol Times, Sanchez also is investigating why Rogers charged the state for more than $19,000 in mileage and subsistence expenses — an amount close to her $24,000-a-year legislative salary and much more than her Maricopa County colleagues receive.

What does Arizona law say about residency requirements for legislators?

The Arizona Constitution seems clear on the subject, stating that once elected, officeholders must be qualified voters in "the political division or municipality" in which they were elected.

State statute defines a person's residency as "that place in which his habitation is fixed and to which he has the intention of returning when absent."

That last part about intent has proved especially difficult for anyone challenging an officeholder's residency. As Senate President Warren Petersen told The Arizona Republic in defending Rogers, "If you have three homes, you get to decide which one is a residence."

Who investigates whether lawmakers actually live in their districts?

No state authority checks to ensure a lawmaker lives in his or her district, but challenges do happen — often by the opponents of a candidate running for office.

In 2022, for instance, allies of former state Sen. Vince Leach, R-Saddlebrooke, challenged the residency of now-Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, after Wadsack beat Leach in the primary election. Wadsack claimed that politically motivated attacks forced her to move out of her family home, which is in a Democratic stronghold where she could not have won, and into a rented room a few miles west, which happened to be in Legislative District 17, a Republican-leaning district.

Wadsack won the challenge, though police reports didn't back up her story of attacks by "Antifa" members.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 480-276-3237. Follow him on Twitter @raystern.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers: Who she is, what to know about controversy