The Arizona state Senate censured one of its own after a Republican lawmaker called for the hanging of her political enemies and attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on social media.
The formal rebuke of state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who represents parts of Maricopa County and is a vocal Trump backer, had bipartisan support, with 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans voting in favor of the measure. In response, Rogers called the censure an infringement on her freedom of speech and blasted her colleagues as “communists” on social media.
Rogers’s behavior was “unbecoming of a senator, including publicly issuing and promoting social media and video messages encouraging violence against and punishment of American citizens and making threatening statements declaring ‘political destruction’ of those who disagree with her views. The senator from District 6 has damaged the reputation of the Arizona state Senate by her actions,” state Sen. Rick Gray said in the reading of the motion, according to the Arizona Republic.
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Three Republicans voted against the censure, including Rogers, and three others did not attend the meeting and therefore did not vote.
The censure comes after Rogers said Zelensky, the Jewish leader of Ukraine whose country is being attacked by Russia, a “globalist puppet.” Rogers also made headlines when she delivered remarks at the America First Political Action Conference Friday in Orlando, Florida, an event organized by Nicholas Fuentes, the leader of the America First movement.
“I’ve 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,” Rogers said Friday.
State Sen. Paul Boyer, a Republican from Glendale, condemned Rogers’s speech at the convention and said she needed to stop acting like a victim. “You’re not a victim so quit pretending to be one,” Boyer tweeted. “And stop using Christianity to justify race superiority and executing your political opponents.”
State Senate President Karen Fann, also a Republican, said the chamber supports the First Amendment, “but what we do not condone is members threatening each other, to ruin each other, to incite violence, to call us communists. We don’t do that to each other.”
Democrats in the state Senate have said they do not believe the censure is enough. Sen. Raquel Teran, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party for Arizona, said the chamber should have expelled Rogers instead of censuring her, according to Ktar News.
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Rogers said she knows that her constituents stand with her and her comments even if her party doesn’t. Rogers has been a state senator since 2021.
“I represent hundreds of thousands of people and the majority of them are with me,” Rogers said. “They want me to be their voice. You are really censuring them.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, applauded the move, saying, “Anti-Semitic and hateful language has no place in Arizona,” and, “I believe the vote taken today by the Arizona Senate sends a clear message: Rhetoric like this is unacceptable.”
