Florida school board to vote on demanding resignation from Moms for Liberty co-founder

UPDATE: The Sarasota County School Board voted 4-to-1 on Tuesday to request Bridget Ziegler’s resignation. Ziegler was the only member to vote against the measure. Read the story here.

Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler is expected to face a political reckoning on Tuesday when her fellow board members consider calling for her resignation amid an ongoing sex scandal that has rattled Florida’s conservative education movement.

School Board Chairwoman Karen Rose, who’s long been politically aligned with Ziegler, asked for Tuesday’s vote. So far, at least one other member, Democrat Tom Edwards, has called for Ziegler to resign, telling the Miami Herald that the scandal engulfing her and her husband, Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler, is a “distraction” from the school board’s work.

Bridget Zieger came under scrutiny late last month after it was revealed that her spouse has been under criminal investigation for rape allegations since early October. He has maintained that the encounter was consensual. In an interview with investigators in early November, Bridget Ziegler acknowledged that she and her husband had sex with the alleged victim over a year ago.

While Bridget Ziegler hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in the case, the revelation that she had participated in a three-way sexual encounter with another woman has cast a pall over a prominent Florida Republican who has become one of the state’s most influential promoters of traditional values and conservative principles in Florida schools.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me or for anyone to tell someone what their sexual orientation or gender identity is. That is what the far right has done with their policies that tell people how to live and who to be,” said former Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, who is gay. “But Bridget Ziegler’s crime is the harm that she inflicted on students and on families with her hypocrisy, her rhetoric and her extreme agenda.”

She’s a dangerous hypocrite, but Moms for Liberty co-founder shouldn’t have to leave school board | Opinion

Bridget Ziegler has been a fixture within Florida conservative circles for years.

She was first appointed to the Sarasota County School Board in 2014 by now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who was governor at the time. She was also among the co-founders of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — into law last year, Ziegler stood behind him. She has said she helped write the legislation.

In February, DeSantis appointed Ziegler to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the governing body that oversees much of Disney World’s business operations.

Spokespeople for Scott and DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment on Monday about the school board’s upcoming vote and whether they believe Ziegler should resign from her position.

According to state law, school board members can only be removed by voluntary resignation or by first being suspended by the governor and then voted out of office by the state Senate.

The Sarasota County School Board’s resolution needs the support of a majority of the panel’s five members in order to pass on Tuesday. While Rose and Edwards appear poised to vote in favor of the measure, it’s unclear which way two other members — Vice Chairman Timothy Enos and Robyn Marinelli — will break. Neither responded to the Herald’s requests for comment on Monday.

Rose, who introduced the resolution calling for Ziegler to step down, did not respond to the requests for comment. In a previous statement, Rose called the scandal surrounding the Zieglers “disturbing,” saying that her request for Bridget Ziegler to step down was “for the good of our students, teachers, staff and community.”

Bridget Ziegler also did not respond to emails and a voice mail seeking comment. It’s unclear whether she plans to attend the Tuesday evening school board meeting.

Edwards, who is openly gay, said that he hasn’t spoken with his colleagues about the upcoming school board vote, but argued that it would be “hard for any board member” to oppose the resolution.

But he also said that he has little confidence that Ziegler will resign from the board, even if the resolution passes, noting how Christian Ziegler has also resisted repeated calls to step down as Florida GOP chairman, including from DeSantis and Scott. The Florida GOP’s executive board is slated to meet on Sunday in Orlando to consider disciplinary action against Christian Ziegler.

“If you just look at the language [DeSantis] used about Mr. Ziegler — that this type of distraction from the work at hand is not in the best interest of his party — Mrs. Ziegler falls into the same category,” Edwards said. “The hypocrisy will be a forever distraction from being the student-centric governance that we all want from public education.”

Edwards said that he was “tired of talking about Bridget Ziegler” and the “salacious” details her sex life, but added that the scandal has wounded the “facade called parental rights in education,” which he said has been used by “political status climbers” to erode confidence in public schools.

“The hypocrisy is so profound; it’s textbook,” he said.

Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried said that Bridget Ziegler had lost the moral high ground that she has long claimed.

“Why she should contemplate resigning is because the people that she’s supposed to represent are going to have lost trust and faith in her, and she no longer is going to be able to do her job with any type of credibility,” Fried said.

There’s been at least some tumult among conservative education activists in the days since news of the scandal broke.

Last week, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Bridget Ziegler had left her post at the conservative Leadership Institute, where she served as director of school board programs. Meanwhile, a Moms for Liberty chapter in Pennsylvania announced that it was splitting from the national organization over the group’s response to the allegation against Christian Ziegler.

Moms for Liberty declined to answer the Herald’s questions about the upcoming Sarasota County School Board vote and whether DeSantis should move to suspend Ziegler from the board should she refuse to resign.

Instead, a spokesperson for the group shared a previous statement from two of group’s co-founders, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, saying that Ziegler had left her role at Moms for Liberty nearly three years.

“To our opponents who have spewed hateful vitriol over the last several days: We reject your attacks,” Descovich and Justice said. “We will continue to empower ALL parents to build relationships that ensure the survival of our nation and a thriving education system. We are laser-focused on fundamental parental rights, and that mission is and always will be bigger than any one person.”