That Foreign Guy in the Senate

Just call him the man without a country.

Last year, when the chancellor of UC Santa Cruz wanted to name professor Angela Davis to the campus’ prestigious presidential chair, state Sen. Don Rogers (R-Tehachapi) reacted. He called the chancellor’s move--and the tenured position of Davis, a longtime activist who is an African American--a “seditious act against the law-abiding taxpayers of California.”

What an interesting choice of words, especially now we know the pathetic depths to which Rogers sank in 1992 in trying to avoid paying federal taxes. In a 1992 filing with the Sonoma County recorder’s office, Rogers wrote that his “white man’s citizenship” and the 14th Amendment--a constitutional reading that ranks high in the annals of the bizarre--made him a “nonresident alien.” Further, Rogers declared, “I am not a citizen of the United States.” Rogers now blames the whole episode on bad legal advice and says he intends to rescind the document in which he declared himself a noncitizen.

Among the bottom feeders in the Legislature, no one scrapes his chin more often than Rogers. To achieve his political ends, he has flirted with radical-right groups ranging from white supremacists to militia outfits. His colleagues in the Senate should have taken steps to rein him in long ago. Rogers has no credibility, and the most significant day of his Sacramento service will be the one on which he leaves office. Term limits will force him out of the Legislature next year. Seems a shame he will not leave earlier.