Senate censures Wendy Rogers, and all we hear from Gov. Ducey is sickening silence

Well, it took a while – far, far too long, in fact – but the unmasking of state Sen. Wendy Rogers has finally begun and what a sight it is to behold.

At long last, a few Republican leaders are beginning to speak out about the far right rock star from Flagstaff, a first-term state legislator who has built a national following as she rants about election conspiracies and George Soros and the cabal of Jews, journalists, political elites and other nefarious characters who plot to create a New World Order.

The Senate on Tuesday actually voted 24-3 to censure her for inciting violence at a white nationalist conference on Friday and conduct unbecoming a senator … or any decent human being.

Gov. Doug Ducey isn’t speaking out, of course. Oh, he issued a statement after the censure vote, saying that “antisemitic and hateful language has no place in Arizona.”

But nothing on whether Rogers should have a place in the Senate.

But then, Ducey made it clear last week that Rogers, who spews racist, antisemitic garbage, is preferable to a Democrat.

“She’s still better than her opponent, Felicia French,” he said on Thursday, while defending the nearly $500,000 his PAC spent to get Rogers elected and thus maintain Republican control of the state Senate.

Rogers spoke to white nationalists

Since Ducey’s comment, Rogers has gone on to speak to white nationalists at the America First Political Action Conference where she heaped praise on conference organizer Nick Fuentes, a Holcaust denier who has warned that America needs to protect its “white demographic core” and on Friday noted that people are comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolph Hitler, “as if that isn’t a good thing.”

Fuentes has been labeled a white supremacist by both the Department of Justice and the Anti-Defamation League.

During her pre-recorded speech, Rogers lauded the white nationalists as “patriots” and complained that the country is “forcibly vaccinating people with a bioweapon.” She followed that up with a call for public hangings.

“When we do take back our God-given rights, we will bring these criminals to justice,” 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 for these traitors who have betrayed our country. They have yet to be justly punished for the crimes they have committed.”

She was just getting started.

She tweeted unhinged tripe on Ukraine

Over the weekend, Rogers took to Twitter to fire off post after post of antisemitic and just plain unhinged tripe, decrying the West’s treatment of Russia and calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons”. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arder, she said, “all report to the same Satanic masters.”

“I stand with the Christians worldwide not the global bankers who are shoving godlessness and degeneracy in our face,” Rogers wrote.

Really, it was nothing new for the woman who calls Robert E. Lee a “great patriot” and openly longs for the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the 1950s-era witch hunter who ruined thousands of lives with unproven accusations that they were communists.

That’s when she’s not dog whistling about illegal immigration and warning that “we are being replaced and invaded” – a reference to the Great Replacement Myth, which holds that white people are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants.

Finally, some Republicans have had enough

Finally, over the weekend, at least a few of her fellow Republicans had had enough.

“You're not a victim @WendyRogersAZ so quit pretending to be one,” Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, tweeted. “And stop using Christianity to justify race superiority and executing your political opponents.”

Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, called her comments “bull----.”

And still, Ducey was silent.

Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clink Hickman lambasted Rogers and called on business, community and political leaders to speak out.

“Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers baselessly declares that everyone who doesn’t support her conspiracy theories and beliefs is a Soros puppet, a traitor or a communist,” they said, in a joint statement on Monday. “She has made clear what her beliefs are: She asserts that we should ‘hang’ our political opponents and those we disagree with. She embraces anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic rhetoric. She apologizes for Putin and condemns our allies …

“Wendy Rogers does not represent American values or interests. I trust other business, community, and political leaders will publicly condemn her hateful, dangerous, paranoid, un-American rhetoric.”

Rogers threatened to 'personally destroy' critics

And still Ducey was silent.

Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Galvin tweeted that Rogers “spreads antisemitic tropes in defense of Putin. But most of us Americans reject these fringe extremist views & view the world w/ clear eyes.”

Count the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry among the appalled.

“We hope it goes without saying that the Chamber vehemently condemns the anti-Semitic views espoused by AFPAC and its supporters,” the chamber said, in a statement provided to the Mirror. “Elected officials who spread this kind of hateful and divisive rhetoric will have to answer to the voters.”

And still Ducey was silent.

But not Rogers, who immediately went on the attack.

“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," she tweeted on Monday evening.

“I will not apologize for being white,” she added. “Hit me all you want.”

She has tons of cash and a friendly, new district

Of course, she knows she’s politically safe.

She’s raised an unheard-of $2.5 million for her re-election bid, most of it from out of state. Meanwhile, she was gerrymandered late last year out of a somewhat competitive district into a safe Republican nest, thanks to the work of the Ducey-influenced Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Monday’s censure, sadly, will probably pad her campaign treasury.

Rogers was predictably unapologetic, complaining that her First Amendment rights were under assault (which is nonsense) and that the majority of her constiuents agree with her views (which, if true, is downright depressing).

“You are really censuring them,” she said, in joining Sens. Warren Petersen of Gilbert and Nancy Barto of Phoenix to oppose the censure. “I do not apologize. I will not back down. And I am sorely disappointed in the leadership of this body for colluding with the Democrats to attempt to destroy my reputation.

“In the end I rejoice in that I do and say what is right and I speak as a free American regardless of the actions of this corrupted process today.”

Expect to see a version of that in her next fundraising plea.

Yet Gov. Ducey still has nothing to say?

Credit to the 11 Republican senators who joined with Democrats to at long last draw a line and take a stand, even if some of them appeared mostly upset at her threat to destroy their careers. And to the Maricopa County officials who said what so badly needed to be said.

It's time for decent Republicans to speak out against the bile and nonsense spouted by people like Rogers.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ducey, having perfected the fine art of the blind eye, remains silent about his rock star from the right.

Well, not totally so.

“She’s still,” he told us, “better than her opponent.”

Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sen. Wendy Rogers is censured. Gov. Doug Ducey remains silent