Wendy Rogers, a former pilot in the US Air Force, is running against Sylvia Allen, who has represented Legislative District 6 in the Arizona State Senate since 2015, in the Republican primary.
The two candidates will face off in the Tuesday, Aug. 4 primary, after which the nominee will face Felicia French, who is running unopposed for the Democratic Party nomination, in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Rogers, who currently lives in Flagstaff, has run previously in the area. In 2018, she was the Republican nominee to face Democrat Tom O’Halleran in the race for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.
She ran unsuccessfully in 2016 in the Republican primary in the same district. In previous years, she had run for the 9th Congressional District, as well as for State Senate in Legislative District 17.
Rogers cites her time traveling through the northern part of the state and the Verde Valley as one of her major motivations and qualifications to represent it.
“I’ve reached out to all these areas. I’m known for my door knocking, which I’ve been able to do more of on this campaign for months and months. It’s really been a journey. I’ve slept on people’s couches. I’ve stayed in a dog kennel for three weeks. Everywhere I go it’s, ‘Sure Wendy, stay here. How can we help?’ And so I’ve really been able to listen and learn what the issues are in this district.”
Rogers leans heavily into her conservative bona fides in her campaign challenging an incumbent. She places her support for Second Amendment front and center as a key issue in her campaign and has aligned herself with the Sanctuary County movement, which advocates for counties to pass ordinances reinforcing their commitment to gun rights and declaring the intention to not enforce “red flag” laws that would allow law enforcement to confiscate guns from individuals determined to be medically unstable.
“I would make darn well sure that no red flag laws got passed by the state,” Rogers said. “That’s the genesis of the origin of why these counties are doing this preemptively. There was a Senate Bill, 1519, that didn’t make it through thankfully, but that would have enacted red flag legislation, and that scared the Second Amendment community to the point where it had to adopt a workaround scenario to then make each county a Second Amendment sanctuary county. So to answer the question of what would my role be in the state legislature — it would be to make darn well sure that no red flag laws got adopted.”
In the midst of the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic, Rogers said that she wants to ensure that money allocated to the state by the federal government gets paid out to rural communities, many of which have been hurt by the virus. Rogers argued that businesses must be allowed to stay open even if there was an increase in cases.
“I think it needs to be equitably distributed,” Rogers said. “If there’s doubt as to that, it needs to be explored. Rural families characteristically feel that they are slighted, so if there’s any hint overall — education, money allocation, state legislature, pension — they feel this. It’s palpable among all the small towns.”
Rogers also discussed her view that more needs to be done to encourage economic growth in the area, including branching out from industries, like the tourism that dominates the Verde Valley, that can be so heavily affected by events like the pandemic and resulting drop in travel. She also refers to education as a major issue she wants to highlight in rural areas, since rural residents often have few options and rely on the public schools.
Although Rogers is running against a fellow Republican, she argues that she would mean a real change for voters who seek conservative policy from their senator.
“I never would have supported SB 1519, the red flag bill that I mentioned earlier, and secondly I am completely against any raising of taxes.”
Correction: The original version of this article quoted Wendy Rogers as having said she’d meake “damn well sure that no red flag laws got passed by the state.” This was in error. She said “darn,” and has informed Larson Newspapers that her parents instilled in her a lifelong aversion to foul language.
