How can Gov. Doug Ducey vow to fight antisemitism when he supports Sen. Wendy Rogers?

Gov. Doug Ducey said all the right words on the eve of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“In Arizona, we fight antisemitism and other forms of hate,” he said in a Twitter thread on Tuesday, after signing a bill that requires the Department of Public Safety to collect information about crimes motivated by antisemitism.

“We must continue to do all we can to protect Arizonans from antisemitism and ensure those of the Jewish faith are treated with respect, dignity, and humanity,” he said.

“The record number of antisemitic incidents is appalling and deeply disturbing. Arizona will continue to fight antisemitism,” he said.

Except, of course, when it’s politically inconvenient.

Ducey thinks Rogers is preferable to a Democrat

It’s now been nearly two months since the unmasking of the Arizona Legislature’s resident antisemite, Sen. Wendy Rogers.

This far right, first-term state legislator 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.

But it’s never much bothered Ducey.

In late February, on the eve of her speech to a conference of white nationalists, Ducey defended his assistance in getting Rogers elected in 2020, after 10 years of voters rejecting her brand of politics.

Rogers may spew unhinged, antisemitic garbage but she’s still, apparently, preferable to a Democrat.

“She’s still better than her opponent, Felicia French,” Ducey said, when asked by a reporter whether he regretted the nearly $500,000 his PAC spent to get Rogers elected and thus maintain Republican control of the state Senate.

Never mind the antisemitic tripe she spews

Rogers went on that weekend to speak to the America First Political Action Conference, where she heaped praise on conference organizer Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who notes 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 lamented that we no longer stage public hangings. Then she took to Twitter to fire off post after post of antisemitic tripe, decrying the West’s treatment of Russia and calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons”.

“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 openly longs for the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy and warns 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.

But finally, at least a few Republicans were fed up.

Some Republicans have called Rogers out

Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, publicly called out his colleague.

“You’re not a victim @WendyRogersAZ so quit pretending to be one,” he tweeted. “And stop using Christianity to justify race superiority and executing your political opponents.”

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

“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. “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 … .”

The Senate actually voted 24-3 to censure Rogers, though a fair number of her fellow Republicans seemed mostly put out that she’d threatened to destroy the career of any Republican who came after her.

Ducey then followed up with all the moral outrage of milquetoast.

“Antisemitic and hateful language,” he declared, “has no place in Arizona.”

She'll probably win, so Ducey stays silent

Unless that language comes from the 16th and deciding Republican vote in the Arizona Senate.

Then, it must be OK because we are still waiting on Ducey to denounce Rogers – to say he made a mistake in 2020 or at least to pledge not to do so again this year.

Rogers was destined for defeat in this year’s election until the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission staged a rescue operation. At the last minute, the commission in December surgically carved Rogers’ mobile home out of a heavily Democratic northern Arizona district and into a safe Republican district that stretches from her Flagstaff home all the way south to Oracle, which is just north of Tucson.

That should give her safe harbor for the foreseeable future.

Assuming, that is, that she can get by state Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Apache Junction, which should be a fairly safe bet given that Rogers’ campaign treasury has been fattened with millions of dollars – most of them coming from election deniers who don’t even live in Arizona.

Ducey, meanwhile, waxes on about the evils of antisemitism, unwilling to address the antisemitic elephant in the room.

“As crimes against the Jewish community rise, we will continue to take action to prevent additional harm,” he said.

Unless, sadly, the fight becomes just too politically inconvenient.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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