More support for my view that small donors — particularly those from outside a candidate’s jurisdiction — are fueling extremism:

Midway through a white nationalist’s conference in Orlando last month, one speaker drew applause calling for gruesome violence against “traitors” after excoriating critics of the “honorable” Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and proponents of the “bioweapon” coronavirus vaccine.

“We need to build more gallows,” the speaker said, adding that such a deadly fate would “make an example of these traitors who’ve betrayed our country.”

The speech via video at the Feb. 25 conference organized by far-right activist Nick Fuentes, who has espoused racist and antisemitic views, wasn’t from another online agitator or fringe radio host.

Rather, it was delivered by Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican lawmaker who represents tens of thousands of constituents and has found a rising national profile as a face of the radicalized wing of the GOP.

Rogers’s trajectory shows the political and financial incentives of going to extremes. After losing her earliest races as a mainstream Republican, she moved farther and farther right until she beat an incumbent by campaigning as the more conservative choice. Now, after a year of fanning bogus allegations about election fraud and other false claims, she is the most successful fundraiser in the Arizona state legislature.

She raised nearly $2.5 million in 2021, outraising even statewide candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, according to campaign finance records. Nearly $2 million of that money came from small donations from outside Arizona as she traveled the U.S. calling for the 2020 election to be overturned and demanding audits of the vote without credible evidence of fraud.