Rogers asks court to bar reporter from contacting her
State Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, speaks at a Save America Rally prior to former President Donald Trump speaking on Jan. 15, 2022, in Florence, Ariz. Rogers is asking a court to stop a reporter who is investigating claims she resides outside of the northern Arizona district she represents from contacting her. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
"Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers is asking a court to stop a reporter who is investigating claims she resides outside of the northern Arizona district she represents from contacting her.
Rogers, R-Flagstaff, filed a petition for an injunction against harassment yesterday in Flagstaff Justice Court asking the court to bar Arizona Capitol Times Senate reporter Camryn Sanchez from entering the Arizona Senate building.
The court ordered Sanchez to not contact Rogers at her residence.
Sanchez was in the process of investigating whether Rogers lives in Flagstaff or other homes she has owned outside of her district in Maricopa County. The investigation included an examination of publicly available property records that show Rogers and her husband bought a home in Chandler in January and signed a trust document that said she resides in Tempe.
Neither city is located in Rogers’ Legislative District 7, which includes Payson, Williams, Flagstaff and Show Low but not Maricopa County. . .
DETAILS: On her nomination and elections forms, Rogers lists a Flagstaff address, and Rogers frequently mentions Flagstaff both on social media and at the Senate.
On Jan. 21, Rogers tweeted, “So good to be home in Flagstaff!”
> On Jan 27, she signed the warranty deed for a house in Chandler. On a title document for the Chandler home, Rogers and her husband signed in January, they stated they were “currently residing” at a Tempe home.
> Property records show that Rogers and her husband owned the Tempe home until March 5, 2021 – well into Rogers’ first term representing a Flagstaff-area district in the Senate. Records show they sold the home to an LLC owned by Ohio resident Vincent Abel. Another LLC owned by Abel currently owns a small plane that Rogers owned until November 2017, according to flight tracking website Flight Aware.
Rogers and her husband Harold Kunnen are both pilots. Their new neighborhood in Chandler is close to an airfield and inhabited by many pilots. The $750,000 house’s layout shows that it includes a hangar for planes.
> A neighbor who lives near the Tempe house, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she saw Rogers and her husband at the Tempe house frequently until recently and that the house is now for sale. The neighbor was under the impression that Rogers still owned the Tempe house.
The ARMLS database, a service used by real estate agents, shows that a sale is pending at the Tempe house, but shows no record of the 2021 sale.
The neighbor said Rogers has been in the Tempe house for more than a decade.
“She’s been here forever; I don’t know how long. … That has been her house for a long time,” the neighbor said.
The home Rogers lists as her address in Tempe is in District 8, one of the most liberal districts in Arizona represented by three Democrats: Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, and Rep. Melody Hernandez, D-Tempe.
The home Rogers and her husband bought in Chandler is in another blue district controlled by three Democrats: Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe; Rep. Patty Contreras, D-Phoenix; and Rep. Stacey Travers, D-Phoenix.
Sanchez went to both the Chandler and Tempe homes in an attempt to speak with neighbors and ask Rogers why the January title document states that she resided in Tempe.. .
Rogers asks court to bar reporter from contacting her
State Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, speaks at a Save America Rally prior to former President Donald Trump speaking on Jan. 15, 2022, in Florence, Ariz. Rogers is asking a court to stop a reporter who is investigating claims she resides outside of the northern Arizona district she represents from contacting her. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers is asking a court to stop a reporter who is investigating claims she resides outside of the northern Arizona district she represents from contacting her.
Rogers, R-Flagstaff, filed a petition for an injunction against harassment yesterday in Flagstaff Justice Court asking the court to bar Arizona Capitol Times Senate reporter Camryn Sanchez from entering the Arizona Senate building.
The court ordered Sanchez to not contact Rogers at her residence.
Sanchez was in the process of investigating whether Rogers lives in Flagstaff or other homes she has owned outside of her district in Maricopa County. The investigation included an examination of publicly available property records that show Rogers and her husband bought a home in Chandler in January and signed a trust document that said she resides in Tempe.
Neither city is located in Rogers’ Legislative District 7, which includes Payson, Williams, Flagstaff and Show Low but not Maricopa County. State statute around lawmakers’ residency uses the word “intention” and maintains that a lawmaker’s home is where “his habitation is fixed and to which he has the intention of returning when absent.” In past residency lawsuits, challengers have struggled to prove that defendants don’t intend to return to their district if they’ve been living somewhere else.
Where legislators live can have financial implications.
Between March 31, 2022, and Jan 6, 2023, Rogers collected $19,754 in per diem subsistence payments on top of her $24,000 salary as a lawmaker.
Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, collected just $3,010 in the same time period because he lives in Maricopa County and represents a district in that county.
In each pay period, senators sign their name on a subsistence and mileage report their assistants prepare, and that is submitted to the Senate Accounting Office. Senators are paid for subsistence and mileage “on a bi-weekly basis with their paycheck.”
Lawmakers can opt out of getting per diem money, but Rogers has not.
Rogers did not respond to requests for comment.
On her nomination and elections forms, Rogers lists a Flagstaff address, and Rogers frequently mentions Flagstaff both on social media and at the Senate.
On Jan. 21, Rogers tweeted, “So good to be home in Flagstaff!”
On Jan 27, she signed the warranty deed for a house in Chandler. On a title document for the Chandler home, Rogers and her husband signed in January, they stated they were “currently residing” at a Tempe home.
Property records show that Rogers and her husband owned the Tempe home until March 5, 2021 – well into Rogers’ first term representing a Flagstaff-area district in the Senate. Records show they sold the home to an LLC owned by Ohio resident Vincent Abel. Another LLC owned by Abel currently owns a small plane that Rogers owned until November 2017, according to flight tracking website Flight Aware.
Rogers and her husband Harold Kunnen are both pilots. Their new neighborhood in Chandler is close to an airfield and inhabited by many pilots. The $750,000 house’s layout shows that it includes a hangar for planes.
A neighbor who lives near the Tempe house, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she saw Rogers and her husband at the Tempe house frequently until recently and that the house is now for sale. The neighbor was under the impression that Rogers still owned the Tempe house.
The ARMLS database, a service used by real estate agents, shows that a sale is pending at the Tempe house, but shows no record of the 2021 sale.
The neighbor said Rogers has been in the Tempe house for more than a decade.
“She’s been here forever; I don’t know how long. … That has been her house for a long time,” the neighbor said.
The home Rogers lists as her address in Tempe is in District 8, one of the most liberal districts in Arizona represented by three Democrats: Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, and Rep. Melody Hernandez, D-Tempe.
The home Rogers and her husband bought in Chandler is in another blue district controlled by three Democrats: Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe; Rep. Patty Contreras, D-Phoenix; and Rep. Stacey Travers, D-Phoenix.
Sanchez went to both the Chandler and Tempe homes in an attempt to speak with neighbors and ask Rogers why the January title document states that she resided in Tempe.
In her petition for the injunction against harassment, Rogers alleged that when Sanchez went to the Tempe and Chandler homes, she violated direction from Arizona Senate leadership that she not speak to Rogers.
Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University, said Rogers’ justification “seems completely inadequate to justify a lawsuit.”
“Normally, if you say somebody’s looking into you too much, that alone is not the harassment; it’s really saying that that’s gaining evidence or gaining information so that they can harass you,” Leslie said. “And yet in this case, it’s pretty clear you’re gathering the information so that you can see if this public official is behaving honestly, so it seems like an absolutely meaningless claim to me.”
. . .This article includes reporting conducted by Camryn Sanchez before the lawsuit was filed regarding questions surrounding Sen. Wendy Rogers’ residency. Wayne Schutsky reported on the court action.
Sen. Wendy Rogers runs to court to avoid a reporter armed with ... questions
Opinion: I'm not surprised Sen. Wendy Rogers would cry 'harassment!' to a reporter asking questions. But for a judge to aid her, threatening the reporter with arrest? That's a stunner.
Laurie Roberts
"Sen. Wendy Rogers has come up with a novel approach to block the public from finding out whether she really lives in her legislative district.
Apparently, she’s worried. So much so that she’s enlisted the aid of a judge to thwart a state Capitol reporter’s legitimate inquiry into her place of residence.
And to my utter astonishment, the judge actually went along with Rogers’ scheme.
Rogers said she lives in Tempe, records show
Suspicions have swirled for years about where Rogers really lives, ever since she supposedly moved out of her longtime Tempe home to go live in a trailer in Flagstaff and run for the state Senate in 2020.
Arizona law requires legislators to live in the district they represent for at least a year before their election, though judges have mostly made a mockery of that law.
So when Arizona Capitol Times reporter Camryn Sanchez discovered Rogers and her husband bought a $750,000 home in Chandler in January, she launched an investigation.
Like any good reporter, Sanchez hit up publicly available property records and dug out the documentation, according to a story by the Cap Times’ Wayne Schutsky.
Imagine her surprise to find paperwork filed as part of the purchase – signed on Jan. 27 by both Rogers and her husband – stating that they were “currently residing” not in their Flagstaff trailer but at their supposed previous home in Tempe.
Which, like their house in Chandler, is nowhere near Rogers’ northern Arizona legislative district.
So, ringing a doorbell is 'stalking'?
So, Sanchez did what diligent reporters do. She went to both houses, hoping to find out the truth of where Rogers really lives.
Rogers’ response was to run to a Flagstaff judge and claim she’s being stalked.
“Creepy @azcapitoltimes reporter @CamrynSanchezAZ has been stalking me and my neighbors at my private residences with no explanation,” she tweeted on Thursday. “A judge just issued a restraining order against her for her bizarre behavior.”
Sure enough, Flagstaff city Magistrate Amy Criddle on Wednesday granted Rogers’ request, issuing an injunction against harassment and ordering Sanchez not to contact Rogers at her residences.
So what was this so-called “bizarre behavior” that prompted the judge to threaten Sanchez with arrest should she dare go in search of the truth about where the senator really lives?
What manner of harassment was poor Sen. Rogers forced to endure?
Rogers attached three doorbell camera photos showing Sanchez just standing there as she rang the doorbell and waited to see if someone would answer.
“I don’t know this reporter personally,” Rogers said in a statement issued on Thursday. “I don’t know what she is capable of, and I don’t believe anyone in their right mind would show up uninvited to my home at night. Therefore, I don’t trust that this person wouldn’t lash out and try to physically harm me in some fashion.”
It's not the first time Rogers has tried to stop Sanchez from doing her job. In March, she asked Senate President Warren Petersen to bar her from the Senate floor – a privilege granted to reporters who regularly cover the Capitol.
This, apparently because she dared to approach Rogers’ desk with a question – again, a routine move for a Capitol reporter. . .
Why did a judge go along with this?
In her petition to the judge, Rogers wrote that she filed the request for an injunction “at the urging of the Senate President.”
Sure, I can see why a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who touts her military pilot training and poses on occasion with her trusty AR-15 might fear a reporter armed with a notebook – and questions the good senator clearly doesn’t want to answer."
. . .Does Rogers live in Tempe, where one neighbor told Sanchez the legislator has been living for more than a decade?
Does she live in the home she recently bought in Chandler – the one with a hangar where she can park her plane?
Or does she live in a trailer in Flagstaff – and, by the way, collect tens of thousands of dollars every year in per-diem payments given to lawmakers who live outside of Maricopa County?
Rogers’ northern Arizona constituents have a right to know whether their representative is really, well, their representative.
And last I checked, public officials are answerable to the public."
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
RELATED PREVIOUS CONTENT ON THIS BLOG
Arizona State Senate Censures Republican Right-Wing Senator Wendy Rogers
Intro:
Senate votes to censure Wendy Rogers for threatening her colleagues
Her ties to white nationalists and antisemitic statements were removed from the censure
"In the wake of her speech to a white nationalist conference and a string of offensive and inflammatory social media posts, the Arizona Senate voted to censure Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers.
The Senate voted 24-3 in a rare censure of one of its own, with 11 of the chamber’s 16 Republicans siding with the chamber’s 13 Democratic members who were in attendance. Rogers voted no, as did GOP Sens. Nancy Barto and Warren Petersen.
The censure, which has no practical effect, was for comments calling for people she perceived as enemies to be hanged from gallows, and for social media postings Rogers made threatening to “personally destroy” fellow Republicans who sought to punish her. The censure resolution was silent on her embrace of white nationalists and a string of antisemitic and racist things she had posted online in recent days.
Rogers, a Flagstaff Republican, didn’t defend or even address her comments on the Senate floor. Instead, she called the censure an attempt to limit her freedom of speech.
======================================================================
INSERT: Listen to what Rogers had to say following the censure - including an allegation for defamation of character
Duration: 2:58
Posted: 12 hours ago
======================================================================
“I represent hundreds of thousands of people and the majority of them are with me. And they want me to be their voice. You are really censuring them. 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,” Rogers said. “In the end, I rejoice in knowing I do and say what is right. And I speak as a free American, regardless of the actions of this corrupted process today.”
However, Senate President Karen Fann said the censure wasn’t about freedom of speech.
“We do support First Amendment freedom of speech. We absolutely support it. We fight battles over it. 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,” said Fann, a Prescott Republican. “We, as elected officials, are held to a higher standard.”
[. ] Republicans have only a 16-14 majority in the Senate, meaning Rogers could block any GOP bill that doesn’t have Democratic support from passing.
Rogers spoke to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference on Feb. 25. She called for gallows to be built so “high-level criminals” and “traitors who have betrayed our country” can be publicly hanged. . .Rogers threatened retaliation against any GOP colleagues who joined the effort, writing on social media, “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.”
. . .Rogers reposted messages from supporters on Telegram referring to the senators who censured her “godless commies” and calling the vote “Karen Fann’s last betrayal before she slithers away into retirement.” Fann is not running for re-election, though she’s eligible to seek another term in the Senate.
Rogers posted a draft version of the censure on social media, which showed that it was originally written to reprimand her for “inciting general racial and religious discrimination.” But that language was removed, as was a reference to her support of Putin.
Fann told the Arizona Mirror that she removed the language on racial and religious discrimination because some senators wanted to make clear that they support freedom of speech, but that Rogers’ threatening comments are not protected under the First Amendment.
[. ] Rogers spent a decade seeking office, first from Tempe and then from Flagstaff, before finally winning a state Senate race in 2020, ousting incumbent Sylvia Allen in the Republican primary. She ran for the Senate in 2010, then for Congress in each of the four subsequent elections, twice seeking the seat for the 9th Congressional District in the Phoenix area and twice running for the northern Arizona-based 1st Congressional district.
...Rogers has become one of the legislature’s most vocal proponents of the false and debunked allegations that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump. She has made herself into a celebrity among Trump supporters across the country, raising $2.5 million for her re-election, a record for a legislative candidate in Arizona. . .
[. ] Please Note:
Rogers was nearly drawn out of her legislative district but was saved by a last-minute change by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Rogers’ Flagstaff home was initially going to be in the new District 6, which is majority Native American and overwhelmingly Democratic. The commission made a series of changes to move parts of Flagstaff out of the district at the behest of the tribes, which were concerned about being outvoted in Democratic primaries by white voters.
After what appeared to be the final changes, Republican Commissioner David Mehl proposed one more change that moved another portion of southern Flagstaff, including Rogers’ home, into heavily Republican District 7. Democratic Commissioner Shereen Lerner claimed Mehl said he was making the change at the request of a friend. Mehl would not say who asked him to make the change or whether he knew an incumbent lawmaker lived there."
RELATED
27 February 2022
ARIZONA STATE SENATOR WENDY ROGERS: New White Nationalist Icon
Wendy Rogers said white nationalists are ‘patriots’ and called for hanging political enemies
"A Republican state senator fawned over the leader of a white nationalist movement on Friday and told his followers that she fantasizes about hanging her perceived enemies from gallows.
“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,” Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said Feb. 25 in her speech to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida.
Rogers told the white nationalists who were assembled in the ballroom at the Orlando World Center Marriott that they were “patriots.” . .
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