Wendy Rogers, Republican senator in Arizona, is receiving a lot of backlash for retweeting a call to “celebrate” Confederate generals. Critics are particularly appalled that the senator retweeted the call on Martin Luther King Jr Day, celebrated on January 17 every year. 

The tweet was originally posted by Scott Greer, formerly of the right-wing publication the Daily Caller. Greer tweeted an image with the photos of Confederate Generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson urging people to “Celebrate Lee-Jackson Day”. 

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Scott Greer left the conservative outlet Daily Caller when it came to light that he’d been writing under a pseudonym for a white supremacist publication associated with Richard Spencer. His tweet calling people to “Celebrate Lee-Jackson Day" was retweeted by Senator Rogers.

Lee-Jackson Day was a state holiday in Virginia in honor of the generals. In an allegedly racist move, Virginia merged Lee-Jackson Day with Martin Luther King Jr Day in 1983 when former President Ronald Reagan signed legislation making the latter a federal holiday. In 2000, Virginia moved Lee-Jackson Day to the Friday before MLK Jr Day. The state eliminated the holiday in 2020. Arizona does not recognize Lee-Jackson Day as the state was founded more than 50 years after the end of Civil war. 

One Twitter user commented under Nick Martin tweet, "Modern day losers celebrating historic losers. Makes perfect sense to me." Another user said, "They aren't only NOT hiding it, they're PROUD to publicly and boldly profess their racism. WHERE IS THE PUBLIC UNITY AND OUTRAGE AGAINST THIS?? The GOP is silent, complicit....and on board."

"It would seem people do not get tired of fomenting hate and racism. The constituents of the lawmaker might want to reconsider their vote the next time," commented a third user. "Wendy Rogers couldn't scream, 'I'm a white supremacist' any louder than this. Are you proud of her, Arizona?" commented a Twitter user. 

After spending a decade trying and failing to get elected, Rogers finally won a seat on the state senate in 2020. The Arizona Republic reports that she raised $2.5 million for her state senate re-election campaign last year. 

An op-ed in the Republic describes her as potentially “the kookiest person to ever sit in the Arizona legislature.” It also notes that she spread a false, QAnon-esque rumor that a Republican rival was linked to a sex trafficking ring during her failed bid for a seat in Congress in 2018.