Media
Sarasota School Board election: Tom Edwards wins, Liz Barker defeats incumbent Rose - Herald Tribune 8/20/24
Tom Edwards, an incumbent, and Liz Barker, a newcomer, won election to the Sarasota County School Board, according to unofficial results from the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections. The outcomes indicated a public pushback against the direction of the board's conservative majority.
Edwards, who ran for reelection in District 3, and Barker, who challenged the incumbent board chairwoman Karen Rose in District 2, would constitute a two-person progressive minority on the School Board, which has been engulfed in turmoil for more than four years.
The two will be formally sworn in at a School Board meeting in November. Their terms last through November of 2028.
Edwards had about 56% of the vote in District 3 and Barker had 51.5% in District 2.
Ron DeSantis Suffers String of Defeats in Florida School Board Races - Newsweek 8/21/24
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suffered a string of defeats in school board races in several counties on Tuesday.
The Republican governor, who has sought to reshape his state's education system by regulating how schools deal with subjects such as race, sexual orientation and gender, threw his support behind 23 school board candidates last month.
A majority of those candidates lost their races on Tuesday.
In Sarasota County, Liz Barker defeated Karen Rose, an incumbent candidate endorsed by DeSantis.
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Karen Rose, the DeSantis-backed chair of the Sarasota County School Board, will lose her election, according to unofficial results posted by the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections.
Rose, also endorsed by Moms for Liberty, was defeated by Liz Barker, who, according to a biography on her campaign website, has four children in the school district.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to have been elected to serve on the Sarasota School Board,” Barker said in a statement. “I am committed to working collaboratively with parents, educators, administrators, and community members to ensure that our schools provide a safe, nurturing, and academically rigorous environment for every student.”
Barker was endorsed by “Educated. We Stand,” a group that describes itself as “dedicated to safeguarding the integrity of public education” and aims “to limit the influence of far right extremists.”
Barker’s campaign website said she wants to get politics out of schools. She also said parents should get to make decisions on what books are appropriate for their children “without that decision being dictated by another parent.”
News Channel 8 has reached out to Rose for comment via email. Facebook pages linked on her website appear to have been removed or made private.
Sarasota Moms Bring in the Big Guns to Oust Bridget Ziegler - The Daily Beast 3/7/24
The campaign ad begins with creepy piano music and scenes from Trump rallies and the Jan. 6 insurrection. “The far right has brought their brand of violent chaos and bigotry into our schools,” a narrator says, before members of the Proud Boys flash on screen.
Proud Boys—who belong to a male-dominated extremist group—are also pictured at the election night party of Bridget Ziegler, the Florida school board member whose three-way sex scandal has spotlighted the hypocrisy of her anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
“Enough is enough,” the video concludes. “It’s time to bring sanity back to our schools.”
The School Sanity Project launched this advertisement on Tuesday ahead of yet another board meeting that attracted protests against Ziegler, a Moms for Liberty co-founder, and demands for her resignation.
The newly-founded group “School Sanity Project” is also set to launch their own campaign tonight. The organization’s mission statement says they aim to “protect the educational environment from divisive and dangerous right-wing ideologies.”
The group recently unveiled a new truck with Ziegler’s face on it back in February. This is all amid the State Attorney’s investigation of video voyeurism charges against her husband, Christian Ziegler, after Sarasota Police detectives found a sex tape between Ziegler and the woman who would later accuse him of rape.
The Political Price of Strange Bedfellows - SRQ Magazine
A series of box trucks started driving around town this week with a picture of Bridget Ziegler across the side and the words “Stop the School Board Scandal.” The trucks debuted outside a School Board meeting this week as part of a campaign called the School Sanity Project.
That group intends to continue challenging the personal integrity of arguably the area’s most famous school board member, before and after a scandal last year turned her and husband Christian Ziegler from power players to punchlines.
About four months into some a police investigation and some tawdry revelations, organizers for the campaign say they are just getting started. They plan to tie Ziegler’s notorious insincerity into a problem for a social conservative majority barely a year into its reign.
"We're fighting back against extremist school board members like Bridget Ziegler, who has turned the Sarasota School Board into a circus with her blatant hypocrisy and bad-faith policymaking," said Senior Advisor to the Project, Samantha Pollara. "This billboard is only the beginning of our campaign and our battle against extremists in education. Enough is enough. It's time to bring sanity back to our schools."
But this past school board meeting was a little different; a truck was parked outside with Ziegler’s face on a sign that said “Stop the School Board Scandal.”
“We want to see an end to the chaos on the school board, an end to the circus,” said Samantha Pollara, a senior advisor to the School Sanity Project.
Calls for Bridget Ziegler to step down taking on a new look - ABC7 2/20/24
The newly formed “School Sanity Project” group, sent a mobile truck to the Sarasota County School Board meeting on Tuesday with Bridget Ziegler’s face on it. The truck also had the message “Stop the school board scandal.” The meeting started at 3 p.m. and the truck parked outside then drove on Tamiami Trail after the meeting until 8 p.m.
According to a handout from the group, they are a “political action committee formed around grassroots community action.”