The deepening troubles of Christian and Bridget Ziegler would be just another local news story if they were two private people. But they are highly public figures who are suddenly in a heap of trouble, and their sex life is in headlines.
He is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, close to both Gov. Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trump. She is a nationally known conservative culture warrior, a Sarasota County School Board member and a co-founder of the book-banning Moms for Liberty, which denounces all things LGBTQ. She is also a DeSantis appointee to the Disney World oversight board.
Christian Ziegler is accused, though not formally charged, of raping a woman at her apartment in Sarasota. She told police of a previous three-way sexual encounter with both Zieglers and said she was “mostly in” for Bridget — not him.
Sarasota police say Bridget Ziegler confirmed the previous threesome. They had recorded Christian Ziegler promising his accuser that there would be another. Text messages showed that the woman had told him not to come to her house without Bridget. He went there anyway and admits to having sex with her, but insists it was consensual.
Dissing DeSantis, and others
It is astonishing that Ziegler won’t resign as party chairman, or step aside temporarily, in the face of mounting pressure.
DeSantis wants Ziegler out, but is powerless to remove him. So do other leading Republicans: Sen. Rick Scott, all three Cabinet members and both leaders of the state Legislature. Conspicuously missing from their statements are expressions of concern for the possible rape victim.
The third and final Florida Cabinet member, FL Atty General Ashley Moody, says FL GOP chief Christian Ziegler should quit
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) December 5, 2023
The state party vice chairman, Evan Power, has called a closed-door Dec. 17 executive committee meeting in Orlando to “censure or discipline” the chairman after Ziegler refused to call the meeting himself.
Bridget Ziegler remains on the school board, feeding the nationwide mockery over the blatant hypocrisy between her private life and her public preaching. She is also under pressure to resign.
The presumption of innocence
Christian Ziegler is legally innocent unless he’s convicted. There is nothing on the public record that Bridget Ziegler could be charged with, since hypocrisy is not a crime. Neither is a ménage à trois among consenting adults. Her virulent hatred for all things LGBTQ in public while conducting a bisexual tryst in private is damning only in the court of public opinion.
But the Zieglers show contempt for public opinion and for the Republican political machine that enriched them and made them prominent public figures. They should retire discreetly to private life while the criminal investigation proceeds.
Whether she can ever again be a credible member of a school board, or maintain any connection with Moms for Liberty, is in serious doubt. She should resign, too.
“She is nothing but a distraction from before and only getting worse and it will never go away as long as she sits there,” fellow School Board member Tom Edwards told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He cited her attempts to prevent discussion of LBGTQ topics in schools.
As school board chair last year, Bridget Ziegler allowed a public speaker to continue calling the openly gay Edwards an “LBGTQ groomer.” That insult implies child abuse and has become a verbal weapon of choice against anyone who opposes book-burning and curriculum censorship. Ziegler reportedly later apologized.
A pariah to the cause
Moms for Liberty, its credibility further damaged, raced to distance itself from Ziegler and announced that she left its national leadership three years ago, even as she continued to propagate its ideology of intolerance. Her latest financial disclosure form lists $64,101 in income from the Leadership Institute LLC in Arlington, Va., nearly twice her school board salary of $33,916.
The institute says it “trains conservatives.” Until Wednesday, it listed her as vice president of its School Board Leadership Program. Her name disappeared later that day from the staff list.
Earlier, a Moms for Liberty chapter in Northumberland County, Pa., said it would break with the national organization because it’s “hard to advocate for parental rights when the co-founder is caught up in the scandal.”
Christian Ziegler, meanwhile, regurgitates the standard defense of influential men accused of sexual assault. He claims he’s the victim, if you can believe that.
‘A country to save’
“We have a country to save, and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for the process to wrap up,” he said.
Like Trump, who supported his election as party chair, and like DeSantis, whose slogan is “Never Back Down,” Ziegler advised a Moms for Liberty national conference to “Never apologize. Ever.” It was a reference to a Moms for Liberty chapter that apologized for using a quote from Adolf Hitler in its newsletter.
As a political strategist, he is ruthless. “Until we get every Democrat out of office and no Democrat considers running for office, we’re going to continue to step on the gas and move forward in Florida,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, last February, when he was elected party chairman.
Until no Democrat dares to run?
Democrats are clamoring for Ziegler to resign. With his credibility in ruins, he does them a favor and does the Republican Party a grave disservice every day he remains “Mr. Chairman.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at .
