When a lawmaker representing Sedona and the Verde Valley makes national headlines, it’s either for something ridiculous or for something horrendous. We always hope it’s for the former, but it’s almost inevitably for the latter.
And so it is the latter with the censure of Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers [R-District 6], led not by Democrats to oppose her on policy, but by a member of her own party, Sen. Majority Leader Rick Gray, [R-District 21].
The censure measure passed overwhelmingly, 24-3. Generally that type of bipartisanship in the Arizona State Legislature is reserved for renaming a park after a veteran.
Rogers claims the censure is some attempt to infringe on her freedom of speech, which clearly demonstrates one thing: She does not understand what free speech is nor what the First Amendment to the Constitution protects. One would assume the U.S. Air Force teaches their pilots the basics of the Constitution, but maybe she was out sick that week.
The First Amendment protects people from government censorship, period. It doesn’t protect anyone from the consequences of what they say, be it getting kicked off a private business’ social media platform, getting fired or censured or being called four-letter words in public.
If you say something dumb, expect people to tell you so. The Constitution is no shield for idiocy in public.
As one of the most far-right members of the legislature, most of Rogers’ legislation has never made into or past committee, but it’s good for raising money. She has been a reliable but inconsequential member of the senate, which isn’t that surprising for most freshmen.
However, Rogers made waves by latching onto far-right and white supremacist talking points. Last week, she was one of several sitting lawmakers to speak at the America First Political Action Conference, an annual white nationalist and far-right political event that eagerly wants to rival the less fringy Conservative Political Action Conference, where many mainstream Republican and conservatives lawmakers also spoke last week.
AFPAC was founded and is run by podcaster Nick Fuentes, who created it after a conservative broadcaster fired him following his conspicuous attendance at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
In her video-taped speech to AFPAC , Rogers called Fuentes the “most persecuted man in America”; attacked CPAC for its “B” rating of her; pejoratively called CPAC speakers U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw [R-Texas], former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Sen. James Lankford [R-Okla.] and the Anti-Defamation League “communists”; applauded AFPAC’s Christian nationalism; and said AFPAC needed to build gallows to hang traitors.
In addition, last month, Rogers used anti-Semitic language to criticize a bipartisan letter of support for Ukraine and its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose great-grandfather and three great-uncles were murdered in the Holocaust. She then threatened to “personally destroy the career of any Republican” who criticizes her stance on Ukraine.
While her statements can be called ignorant, stupid or abhorrent, none of the political speech is prohibited, banned or “censored” by any government, despite what Rogers claims. Even an anti-Semitic post replacing the “A” in “CPAC” with a Star of David has not been removed by any government. It’s still online, if you want to go see who represents us and decide if you want to reelect her in November.
Free speech allows Rogers to say all these things. But she should know that we, her voters, can reject her at the ballot box and have the free speech to loudly condemn her. So do senators.
The original draft censure condemned Rogers’ “racial and religious discrimination” and her “absurd comments regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” but leaders culled that to focus on her imagery of gallows and threats of violence which was too much for Arizona state lawmakers. Apparently anti-Semitism is still OK in the Arizona Senate, but physical threats is a red line.
Rogers was voted into office by only 67,379 votes, not the “hundreds of thousands” she claimed in her response. Rogers then added, “You are really censuring them.”
Nope. The senate isn’t. We didn’t speak at AFPAC, didn’t threaten to hang anyone, didn’t post anti-Semitic messages on our Twitters, didn’t bash Zelenskyy for being Jewish. We aren’t being censured. We’re doing fine.
Rogers represents us, but her words are not ours just because they passed through her lips. That’s what a totalitarian dictator claims, not an American lawmaker.
Also censure is not censorship; same root, different meaning. Rogers suffers no penalty other than senators telling her she’s acting like a brat.
She was a colonel, now she’s a senator. No one is telling her to shut up, but she needs to suck it up and grow up. She has spoken. The people will speak on Election Day.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
