January 18, 2023 • 23 mins
Ever since the pandemic saw school boards explode into shouting matches over mask mandates, nothing has been the same. And Florida has been the epicenter of some of those battles. Leading the charge is Bridget Ziegler, mother of three, and chair of the Sarasota school board. She is against the teaching of CRT and gender identity, but she is pro protecting the rights of parents. And Governor Ron DeSantis endorses her. Bloomberg spent several days with Ziegler, and over the course of three episodes we got to know her – and her opponents.
In chapter one of “The School Board Queen” we meet Ziegler and her family, and we learn her origin story. There were mean girls in high school. She didn’t finish college. And it was a surprising suggestion from her husband that set her on the school board path. We also talk to a former school board member who was so put off by Ziegler’s “shenanigans” that she left the Republican party and registered as a Democrat.
“The School Board Queen” is reported, produced and hosted by Kathleen Quillian and Samantha Storey. For more information visit bloomberg.com/bedrock-usa. Have a suggestion or comment? We’d love to hear from you: kquillian@bloomberg.net or samanthastoreywrites@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're meeting her here at the round about, he said,
round about. The entrance sent okay, when we here part.
Welcome back to Bedrock, USA. I'm Kathleen Coullian and I'm
Samantha Story and welcome to our new mini series, The
school Board Queen. For the next three episodes, we're going
to be spending time with a school board member, a
(00:20):
conservative mom who's shaking up America's school boards. Last fall,
we flew to Sarasota, Florida to meet her. Hurricane Ian
had just hit. Schools were closed, and many roads still
needed clearing. But Florida being Florida, it was a beautiful day.
The sun was shining. All right, we are going to
go stand in the shade, my friend. Yeah, you told
(00:43):
her we're here, right, Yeah, I told her. She gave
me a thumb bop. Hi, Bridget, Hi, I'm Bridget, sorry,
perpetually late my life. Bridget Siegler is forty years old
old and is a mom to three adorable little girls.
She sits on the school board of Sarasota County. Girl, Hi,
(01:07):
girl squad, I introduce yourself, hid Hi, and who are you?
Balin Rose. Bridget has lovely energy, She's always smiling, like
she has all the time in the world for her girls.
She's extremely present with them. She's been on the school
(01:29):
board for eight years and it's been a journey. We
met Bridget at Bayfront Park in downtown. It's surrounded by
trees and sailboats. That week we were there, Bridget was busy.
Many school buildings had been flooded during the storm. There
was a ton of damage and she was helping coordinate
the clean up. Yeah, the whole tree on us. Oh yeah,
(01:52):
so yeah, that's every that's so sad for like everything.
I'm like, look at even I haven't been out here,
but like that boat and the sale is totally to shred.
All those sales are to shreds. But you know, if
you go down south, they're all piled up. You did not,
Did you go all the way across? Do you guys?
Come here a lot. We haven't been in a while.
(02:13):
It's rained so much lately, but there's a lot of
parks in Sarasota. A couple of years ago, Bridget helped
co found Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group. Like
many conservatives, she's against a lot of American public school curriculum.
Do you guys want to sit like you tell me
what you want me to do? No? Where? Yeah, you
can sit in chat wherever I am not even though
(02:35):
I were in Florida. I loaded the sun, so I'm
normally in a hat. You ever here, I stay far
away from the sign. Good job. During her bid for
re election last year, she was personally endorsed by Governor
Ron De Santis, an unprecedented move by a governor. Local
candidates are almost never endorsed by a state governor like that.
(02:59):
Bridget is pro parental rights. That's an umbrella label co
opted by conservatives. It's a shorthand way for saying they
don't want kids to learn about the history of racism,
and they have hardline opinions on how gender and identity
are taught. She's been active at the state level. She
helped bring into being the Florida Parental Rights and Education Act.
That's the so called Don't Say Gay Bill, which put
(03:21):
many of those beliefs into law and was passed just
last summer. Her opponents have called her homophobic, racist, a
Christian nationalist. This is in reaction to interview she's done
on Fox News and the Ben Shapiro Show. She says
she's protecting kids from quote learning how to hate America.
It's hard to overstate Brutete's influence. Just this summer, she
(03:44):
was made education director at a conservative nonprofit called the
Leadership Institute. They've been around since the nineteen seventies, and
they're incredibly well funded, like an annual budget that's in
the tens of millions. Most importantly, they're deeply influential. All
they teach people how to run for government. Bridget is
now in charge of the school board trainings. She's been
(04:06):
on the job for six months and already she's trained
over eight hundred people on how to run for school board.
The Leadership Institute has never had a position that specialized
just in school boards, but Morton Blackwell, the institute's founder,
was so impressed with Bridget, she says that he made
a role specifically for her. Most school boards have operated
(04:26):
the same for years and years, but Bridget, she's cracked
the code on how to break the status quo, and
now she's in the position to show other conservatives how
they can do it too. Bridget's rice to power comes
at a time when school boards are becoming more political.
This was clear during the mid terms when they flipped conservative,
(04:48):
and it's clear now as Governor Rhnda Santis is making
education the front runner of his platform. So we flew
to Sarasota to meet the Queen of school Boards to
find out who she is, to learn more about how
she cracked that code in Florida and how she's going
to do it at a national level. We sat and
(05:11):
talked to Bridget on a park bench while her three
girls ran around the playground, and true mom fashion, she
is constantly interrupted. So you grew up in near Chicago, yep,
and the western suburbs Wheaton, Illinois. It's a small, super quaint.
It's funny when you're younger, you don't realize like how
pleasant Ville it was until bridges childhood, like she said,
(05:33):
was pretty idyllic until high school. But then my brother
and sister into college and my dad bought a company
up in Michigan. So I moved my sophomore year of
high school to a totally different town, not super fun.
And when we moved north of it's north of Detroit,
but it's called Port here On. We lived just north
of it. But it's a small town and the company
my dad took over employed, like I want to say,
(05:57):
with something. I don't know the exact staff, but it
was something of every person in the community. So everyone
that was So I went to high school and it
was like my dad was their parents. I would have
never known that like at another school, in my other school.
But it was just a very different as a cultural shift.
But it was in high schools not I mean, I
remember being like terrified of lunch. Reminds me of like
(06:18):
the movie Mean Girls, would you like? I wasn't like
moving from Africa or wherever she was playing Frond, but
but it was dramatically different than any anything I experienced
and so so Bridget says she was bullied by some
mean girls and that experience that trauma can shape a
person when they grew up. After high school, Bridget was
in and out of college. She moved out west to
(06:39):
be with her brother, then back east. She took classes
in business when she could. Eventually she followed her parents
when they moved from Michigan to Florida. She worked in
high in retail like Christian Dior and Gucci. I did
business marketing and then I minored in um economics and yeah,
I loved it. Econ is like fascinating to me. So
(07:00):
then then Gucci actually asked me to come back, and
I was like trying to like make ends meet. So
I started to go to school and work and then
the same thing happened. So I'm probably probably a semester
away from graduating. But still she couldn't avoid the mean
girls and I just want to get out of Miami.
My parents moved kind of for like come over to
(07:21):
Sara Sota, like get yourself set and then you can
move to New York. And um so I was going
to take a job with Gucci in New York, and
then um I evaluated doing getting out of the fashion
world because it was just a different The higher you go,
the more it's very cutthroat and it's very intense and
not the politics is any like light thing either. But
(07:42):
Bridget says she's a semester away from graduating college. She
never got her degree. We asked her about that. But
it's interesting even when I was applying at jobs, Uh,
my non not finishing school always was like this like
taboos like in our world, our generation, it was like
you that like you have to go to school, you
have to UHI still paying down like I don't haven't finished,
(08:04):
and still paying down whatever I took out, like the
loans I took out, almost done, thank god. But um,
it's just fascinating because that when when I ran for office,
that was one of the things. My father was like,
you're gonna really be opening yourself up to a lot
of scrutiny and something that and then that would be
the number one thing, And it was. But it was like,
all right, we just gotta rip it off like a
band aid. Let everybody know, because I was very capable,
(08:25):
and like, my journey just took a difference. I learned
by application, like far better. But it was so that's
my education journey. So there's someday I may finish. I
probably will. She settled into Sarasota and after working at
Gucci for a while, eventually she took a job in insurance,
but not finishing her degree. For bridget that made her
(08:45):
feel ashamed. Over the years, she's overcome this and now
after a great deal of success, she feels like she
learned to be resilient. We'll be back at to the break,
all right, I'll see you later, kid out. I love you.
Goodness you guys. This is really handing it up. All right,
(09:13):
I think I can't do what songs like choking me
over here? All right, Audios, bye bye. After we met
at the park, we asked Bridget to give us a
tour of the Sarasota County School District. It's a Grade
A school district serving students with over fifty schools. We
were in for a long ride, okay, and if you
(09:38):
guys are well, we'll probably stop somewhere and get at
something to eat somewhere. Bridget's car, like most family cars,
was a happy mess. There was stray shoes and small
toys scattered everywhere. A flat Stanley book was shoved into
one side of a car seat. Worried, So we are
downtown Szar's it on main Street. My I am geographically
challenged by the way, and it's only gotten worse becoming
(10:00):
a mother. And two because I always lean on maps,
so so um bear with me, and if I get
if I drive poorly, because I get, I'm very sensitive
to car sickness, So please let me know. Downtown Sara
Sota is cute and small and made up of mid
rise condos and new construction. She drove us past where
(10:21):
two of her kids go to school, a private school
also downtown. So this is their school as a monetary school.
It's just just here. It's like connected to the church.
She found, uh space they would do. It's super cute inside.
But what was awesome was and there's a play grown
over there. So that's where my two younger daughters go
to school. Were slown. And then we drove out of
downtown through a couple of neighborhoods where the housing was
(10:42):
a little more run down. Our first stop in the
northern part of the district was Booker High School. It's
a magnet school with a popular visual and performing arts program,
and it's one of the crown jewels of the district.
And now seemed like a good time to ask her
why she ran for school board in the first place.
Back in twenty routine, can you remember, Oh my gosh,
(11:02):
I remember the day. I remember it. I have a
visual memory anyway, But I was sitting on the ground
with Fragan, who was eight months old, crawling around, Uh
not quite, she was just about sorok. And my husband
walked in the door from work, remember very specifically, and
he said literally it was like the first thing to said.
He's like somebody just there's a vacant. Somebody just there's
a vacancy on the school board that she abruptly resigned
(11:25):
and you should reve for school board. And I was
like what, you're insane, And he's like no, and so
vividly remember this like it was no. We're raising a
family now, education is key. You'd be amazing at it
and and cover it takes a really long time to work, Like,
we'll have a voice on the table and and be
able so by the time Reagan's in school, we're starting school,
you know, we'll be able to influence the kind of
(11:47):
you know, learning environment and and for her and for
you know, that kind of generation. Bridget's husband is Christian Ziegler.
He's now the vice chair of the Florida GOP, and
back then he was a state committeeman. He was also
the chief operating officer of a branding agency. These days,
he's running for chairman of the Florida GOP. According to
The Washington Post, he's the front runner for the job.
(12:10):
Running for school board was not her idea, but having
the potential of influence over her daughter's future education that's
what appealed to her and her journey to get there. Well,
just an eye opening that one year. We had a
lot happened. We got married, had a baby, I bought
a house, and then I ran for office, all like
(12:32):
in one year and all in all of the span
of twelve months. So I was thirty one at the time,
as a wild year. Bridget filed for office in April,
and in the meantime, while campaigning, she also filed to
be appointed to the position. That means that she could
step onto the school board right away, although it would
be temporary until she officially won the seat in the
election in November. Governor Rick Scott reached out to meet
(12:54):
her in person to vet her, and he said, I
like that you're not part of the establishment. I like
that you're a m and you're an outsider. And he
thought it was spart and quick witted and would work
hard and win, and so he acquitted me. He was
an unusual move for the governor of Florida to do this.
Typically the seat would have stayed open until the election.
(13:16):
We kept driving, Bridget continued the tour. Okay, we are
turning to Venice High School, large performing arts centers. The front.
You can tell again the theater is a huge thing
in Sarastutic County in the cultural arts, and then some
schools she deemed struggling. Some had great theater programs. One
had bulletproof class installed in the wake of the Parkland shooting,
(13:38):
an addition that Bridget was extremely proud of. So what
we're looking at is the single point entry. So that's
all bulletproof glass, which makes me so sad their schools
have to have that on the board. I was able
to get our capital projects to prioritize safeguarding our schools
with single point entriests. All of them have that administrative
entrance with bulletproof glass. There is a second layer so
(13:58):
that if it active shooter comes in that they are
able to be blocked or at least slow them down.
And it is a sad reality that we have to
do those things and spend. Eventually, we pulled into a
parking lot. This here where we are is the landing
So this is an administrative office. It's for Sara Soto's
school board, so our meetings are in here. It's a
(14:20):
little bit older brown building, not very aesthetically pleasing in
my opinion, but that doesn't need to baseelf central office.
This is the real bureauratic blob. This is really the
blobby part. Bridgets run for school board from being appointed
in April to the election in November was the battle
she eventually won. But coming onto the board with no
college degree and no public service experience, and for the
(14:41):
school board members already there, it was a hard pill
to swallow. But you walk into these automatic doors and
then there's two double doors that you go through and
go into the chambers, and you have the board seats
right in front of you. Um, where they're up at
the diets. And I remember, I know exactly where I sat,
remember walking straight to my seats, and there wasn't many
(15:04):
pleasantries or anything like that. Um, I stayed very quiet
and I took copious notes, of which I do always.
I knew I wasn't very very popular with the people
inside this building. They didn't. But my whole, my whole
philosophy was like they will once they get to know
me and they know who I am, like I'll be
able to win them over. Like But that just wasn't
the case. We'll get to that in a second. We'll
(15:26):
be back after the break. So Bridget told us the
people on the board were unprofessional, mean, even but she
might have left out a few details. She was supposed
to be learning the ways of the board, not the
warriors of the board, but the learning the educational system.
And then you're supposed to go for training so that
you understand where we're coming from in construction, where we're
(15:49):
coming from food services, um. And it's a whole litany legislation,
it's a whole litany of knowledge that you have to
have before you and starts to make decisions that are accurate,
decisions that reflect your community. That's Caroline Zucker. I've been
on the Sara Sauta Candy School Board for twenty two years.
(16:11):
During that time, I've had an opportunity to really engage
with our community and off schools and people. We gave
Caroline a call to ask her about Bridget. She retired
from the board a couple of years ago, and her
time there up until Bridget's arrival had been gratifying. But
(16:32):
once Bridget got there, everything changed. If I had had
another year that I probably would have had a heart attack.
According to Caroline, Bridget pushed back from the get go.
She wouldn't comply with how things are supposed to run.
She explained to us how the board typically works. We
didn't always agree with majority of the time we did.
If the superintendent brings before you will proposal that makes sense,
(16:56):
you vote for it. That's what you are there for.
You are there to moderate the superintendent. It's up to
the superintendent to be able to do his job and
work within his structure to make sure that everything is
done according to the rules and regulations of Florida. By
(17:17):
the way, Miss Sigla has no no formal education. She
didn't graduate from college. Typically when someone is new to
the board, they will attend to training to learn how
to do the job. Those trainings are run by the
Florida School Boards Association, which has been around since nine.
Bridget went to a training held by the association right
(17:38):
after she was elected, but she says she didn't agree
with how things were being done. I kept saying that
she'll be all right when she gets to know what
she's doing. She just thought she knew it all. Bridget
rejected the status quo. She told us she didn't believe
her job was to solely support the superintendent, and she
thought the school Board Association was training people all wrong.
(18:00):
So a month after being elected, she made her own
school Board Association a new consortium and invited some of
her conservative allies to join. I can't explain it to
you what a massive was becoming from a board that
was a congenial board that worked together. We were an
a rated board, we had good staff to what was
(18:22):
the chaos that was going on was just unbelievable. During
Bridget's time on the board. Over the next few years,
she continued to march the beat of her own drum.
Like Caroline said, she did not always support the superintendent.
She obstructed and denied many plans. She pushed for state
level policy changes. She worked on legislation that would be
(18:43):
a precursor to the Parental Rights and Education Act, the
so called Don't Say Gay Bill that was passed last year.
That's the bill that restricts how racism and gender identity
are taught in schools. It's controversial, and Caroline described the
bill's impact for us, You won't have the ability to
define who you are. Like of a boy is feels
(19:04):
like they are a girl. He has to stay a
boy because he can't use the girl's restroom, and they
give me all these scenarios of well, hey, it just
wants to use a girl's bathroom because he wants to
see what it's like. No, you don't understand these kids.
You need to take a course in lgbt Q. You
(19:28):
need to go there. You need to see these kids.
I've seen them. I watched them. What I saw one kid,
he was so overwrought he was trying to pull his
hair out of his head and get a rope to
hang himself because he was so upset about being in
the body he didn't want to be in. He didn't
belong to. Bridget's kids don't go to public school. She
(19:49):
told us those schools weren't meeting their educational needs. All
these years, she's been working to shape the schools her
own children might not even attend because ultimately, Caroline says
she wanted the board. She wants the board to be
a totally conservative board. She I was a Republican my
entire life until last year. Last year I switched to
(20:13):
a Democrat because I couldn't take the Shenanigans going on anymore.
And she's got her wish now. During the height of
the pandemic, when school board meetings heated up with mass
mandates enclosures, that's when Bridget helped co found Mombs for Liberty.
They provide guidance on how to fundraise for school boards,
(20:35):
track legislative issues, and review curriculum, and just a couple
of years they've attracted over a hundred thousand members. They
have chapters in almost every state, and over the mid
terms they endorsed hundreds of school board candidates, most of
them running on stances that fall under that parental rights umbrella.
Their goal is to limit government overreach. Caroline mentioned something important.
(20:59):
She said Bridget wants the board to be conservative, and
she's not wrong. That's very much part of how she's
cracking the code to school boards. Historically, most school boards
have been on partisan Bridget is changing that. By having
a conservative board majority, it's a lot easier to make
change to put parental rights in action. We spent the
(21:24):
rest of the afternoon driving around Sara Sota with Bridget.
We saw a lot of schools. It was a long
day and we made plans to see her again. When
we got back to our hotel, Kathleen and I were
both really struck by bridgets ambition, her burning drive to
give parents more control, and she reminded us of another
(21:46):
time in history. I think as a mother, you are
concerned about room children's future, rooms more about your coming along.
And we won't think get heads of proven that we've
had on the our prostitution, because our prostitution and that's
(22:07):
where our country graves at result roll performing and and
the conservative culturals, so we believe it. Next time on
Bedrock USA, we journey back to the nineteen fifties and
talk to the original conservative moms when parents feared the
spread of communism. And we're not done talking to bridget
(22:29):
just yet. But it is not the role of the
government to dictate bad parenting unless it's like true neglectisum
sort I don't. I think historically you see cultural shifts
and that we're with an overreaching government and like and
that's very extreme fashion when you think about like cultural
(22:49):
revolution in China and all those things. But I mean
those are the more that I don't want to go
down that path. I don't want to see our country
go there. This episode was reported, produced and hosted by
us sum At, The story in Cathleen Cullian, original music
and scoring by Zachary Walter, and audio engineering by Blake Maples.
(23:12):
Bed Rock USA is edited by Jennifer Sondag, head of
Bloomberg City Lab. Additional editing help by Peggy Collins, Nicole Flato,
Victor Vayez, and Bill Allison. Bed Rock USA is a
production of Bloomberg City Lab and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
We're meeting her here at the round about, he said,
round about. The entrance sent okay, when we here part.
Welcome back to Bedrock, USA. I'm Kathleen Coullian and I'm
Samantha Story and welcome to our new mini series, The
school Board Queen. For the next three episodes, we're going
to be spending time with a school board member, a
(00:20):
conservative mom who's shaking up America's school boards. Last fall,
we flew to Sarasota, Florida to meet her. Hurricane Ian
had just hit. Schools were closed, and many roads still
needed clearing. But Florida being Florida, it was a beautiful day.
The sun was shining. All right, we are going to
go stand in the shade, my friend. Yeah, you told
(00:43):
her we're here, right, Yeah, I told her. She gave
me a thumb bop. Hi, Bridget, Hi, I'm Bridget, sorry,
perpetually late my life. Bridget Siegler is forty years old
old and is a mom to three adorable little girls.
She sits on the school board of Sarasota County. Girl, Hi,
(01:07):
girl squad, I introduce yourself, hid Hi, and who are you?
Balin Rose. Bridget has lovely energy, She's always smiling, like
she has all the time in the world for her girls.
She's extremely present with them. She's been on the school
(01:29):
board for eight years and it's been a journey. We
met Bridget at Bayfront Park in downtown. It's surrounded by
trees and sailboats. That week we were there, Bridget was busy.
Many school buildings had been flooded during the storm. There
was a ton of damage and she was helping coordinate
the clean up. Yeah, the whole tree on us. Oh yeah,
(01:52):
so yeah, that's every that's so sad for like everything.
I'm like, look at even I haven't been out here,
but like that boat and the sale is totally to shred.
All those sales are to shreds. But you know, if
you go down south, they're all piled up. You did not,
Did you go all the way across? Do you guys?
Come here a lot. We haven't been in a while.
(02:13):
It's rained so much lately, but there's a lot of
parks in Sarasota. A couple of years ago, Bridget helped
co found Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group. Like
many conservatives, she's against a lot of American public school curriculum.
Do you guys want to sit like you tell me
what you want me to do? No? Where? Yeah, you
can sit in chat wherever I am not even though
(02:35):
I were in Florida. I loaded the sun, so I'm
normally in a hat. You ever here, I stay far
away from the sign. Good job. During her bid for
re election last year, she was personally endorsed by Governor
Ron De Santis, an unprecedented move by a governor. Local
candidates are almost never endorsed by a state governor like that.
(02:59):
Bridget is pro parental rights. That's an umbrella label co
opted by conservatives. It's a shorthand way for saying they
don't want kids to learn about the history of racism,
and they have hardline opinions on how gender and identity
are taught. She's been active at the state level. She
helped bring into being the Florida Parental Rights and Education Act.
That's the so called Don't Say Gay Bill, which put
(03:21):
many of those beliefs into law and was passed just
last summer. Her opponents have called her homophobic, racist, a
Christian nationalist. This is in reaction to interview she's done
on Fox News and the Ben Shapiro Show. She says
she's protecting kids from quote learning how to hate America.
It's hard to overstate Brutete's influence. Just this summer, she
(03:44):
was made education director at a conservative nonprofit called the
Leadership Institute. They've been around since the nineteen seventies, and
they're incredibly well funded, like an annual budget that's in
the tens of millions. Most importantly, they're deeply influential. All
they teach people how to run for government. Bridget is
now in charge of the school board trainings. She's been
(04:06):
on the job for six months and already she's trained
over eight hundred people on how to run for school board.
The Leadership Institute has never had a position that specialized
just in school boards, but Morton Blackwell, the institute's founder,
was so impressed with Bridget, she says that he made
a role specifically for her. Most school boards have operated
(04:26):
the same for years and years, but Bridget, she's cracked
the code on how to break the status quo, and
now she's in the position to show other conservatives how
they can do it too. Bridget's rice to power comes
at a time when school boards are becoming more political.
This was clear during the mid terms when they flipped conservative,
(04:48):
and it's clear now as Governor Rhnda Santis is making
education the front runner of his platform. So we flew
to Sarasota to meet the Queen of school Boards to
find out who she is, to learn more about how
she cracked that code in Florida and how she's going
to do it at a national level. We sat and
(05:11):
talked to Bridget on a park bench while her three
girls ran around the playground, and true mom fashion, she
is constantly interrupted. So you grew up in near Chicago, yep,
and the western suburbs Wheaton, Illinois. It's a small, super quaint.
It's funny when you're younger, you don't realize like how
pleasant Ville it was until bridges childhood, like she said,
(05:33):
was pretty idyllic until high school. But then my brother
and sister into college and my dad bought a company
up in Michigan. So I moved my sophomore year of
high school to a totally different town, not super fun.
And when we moved north of it's north of Detroit,
but it's called Port here On. We lived just north
of it. But it's a small town and the company
my dad took over employed, like I want to say,
(05:57):
with something. I don't know the exact staff, but it
was something of every person in the community. So everyone
that was So I went to high school and it
was like my dad was their parents. I would have
never known that like at another school, in my other school.
But it was just a very different as a cultural shift.
But it was in high schools not I mean, I
remember being like terrified of lunch. Reminds me of like
(06:18):
the movie Mean Girls, would you like? I wasn't like
moving from Africa or wherever she was playing Frond, but
but it was dramatically different than any anything I experienced
and so so Bridget says she was bullied by some
mean girls and that experience that trauma can shape a
person when they grew up. After high school, Bridget was
in and out of college. She moved out west to
(06:39):
be with her brother, then back east. She took classes
in business when she could. Eventually she followed her parents
when they moved from Michigan to Florida. She worked in
high in retail like Christian Dior and Gucci. I did
business marketing and then I minored in um economics and yeah,
I loved it. Econ is like fascinating to me. So
(07:00):
then then Gucci actually asked me to come back, and
I was like trying to like make ends meet. So
I started to go to school and work and then
the same thing happened. So I'm probably probably a semester
away from graduating. But still she couldn't avoid the mean
girls and I just want to get out of Miami.
My parents moved kind of for like come over to
(07:21):
Sara Sota, like get yourself set and then you can
move to New York. And um so I was going
to take a job with Gucci in New York, and
then um I evaluated doing getting out of the fashion
world because it was just a different The higher you go,
the more it's very cutthroat and it's very intense and
not the politics is any like light thing either. But
(07:42):
Bridget says she's a semester away from graduating college. She
never got her degree. We asked her about that. But
it's interesting even when I was applying at jobs, Uh,
my non not finishing school always was like this like
taboos like in our world, our generation, it was like
you that like you have to go to school, you
have to UHI still paying down like I don't haven't finished,
(08:04):
and still paying down whatever I took out, like the
loans I took out, almost done, thank god. But um,
it's just fascinating because that when when I ran for office,
that was one of the things. My father was like,
you're gonna really be opening yourself up to a lot
of scrutiny and something that and then that would be
the number one thing, And it was. But it was like,
all right, we just gotta rip it off like a
band aid. Let everybody know, because I was very capable,
(08:25):
and like, my journey just took a difference. I learned
by application, like far better. But it was so that's
my education journey. So there's someday I may finish. I
probably will. She settled into Sarasota and after working at
Gucci for a while, eventually she took a job in insurance,
but not finishing her degree. For bridget that made her
(08:45):
feel ashamed. Over the years, she's overcome this and now
after a great deal of success, she feels like she
learned to be resilient. We'll be back at to the break,
all right, I'll see you later, kid out. I love you.
Goodness you guys. This is really handing it up. All right,
(09:13):
I think I can't do what songs like choking me
over here? All right, Audios, bye bye. After we met
at the park, we asked Bridget to give us a
tour of the Sarasota County School District. It's a Grade
A school district serving students with over fifty schools. We
were in for a long ride, okay, and if you
(09:38):
guys are well, we'll probably stop somewhere and get at
something to eat somewhere. Bridget's car, like most family cars,
was a happy mess. There was stray shoes and small
toys scattered everywhere. A flat Stanley book was shoved into
one side of a car seat. Worried, So we are
downtown Szar's it on main Street. My I am geographically
challenged by the way, and it's only gotten worse becoming
(10:00):
a mother. And two because I always lean on maps,
so so um bear with me, and if I get
if I drive poorly, because I get, I'm very sensitive
to car sickness, So please let me know. Downtown Sara
Sota is cute and small and made up of mid
rise condos and new construction. She drove us past where
(10:21):
two of her kids go to school, a private school
also downtown. So this is their school as a monetary school.
It's just just here. It's like connected to the church.
She found, uh space they would do. It's super cute inside.
But what was awesome was and there's a play grown
over there. So that's where my two younger daughters go
to school. Were slown. And then we drove out of
downtown through a couple of neighborhoods where the housing was
(10:42):
a little more run down. Our first stop in the
northern part of the district was Booker High School. It's
a magnet school with a popular visual and performing arts program,
and it's one of the crown jewels of the district.
And now seemed like a good time to ask her
why she ran for school board in the first place.
Back in twenty routine, can you remember, Oh my gosh,
(11:02):
I remember the day. I remember it. I have a
visual memory anyway, But I was sitting on the ground
with Fragan, who was eight months old, crawling around, Uh
not quite, she was just about sorok. And my husband
walked in the door from work, remember very specifically, and
he said literally it was like the first thing to said.
He's like somebody just there's a vacant. Somebody just there's
a vacancy on the school board that she abruptly resigned
(11:25):
and you should reve for school board. And I was
like what, you're insane, And he's like no, and so
vividly remember this like it was no. We're raising a
family now, education is key. You'd be amazing at it
and and cover it takes a really long time to work, Like,
we'll have a voice on the table and and be
able so by the time Reagan's in school, we're starting school,
you know, we'll be able to influence the kind of
(11:47):
you know, learning environment and and for her and for
you know, that kind of generation. Bridget's husband is Christian Ziegler.
He's now the vice chair of the Florida GOP, and
back then he was a state committeeman. He was also
the chief operating officer of a branding agency. These days,
he's running for chairman of the Florida GOP. According to
The Washington Post, he's the front runner for the job.
(12:10):
Running for school board was not her idea, but having
the potential of influence over her daughter's future education that's
what appealed to her and her journey to get there. Well,
just an eye opening that one year. We had a
lot happened. We got married, had a baby, I bought
a house, and then I ran for office, all like
(12:32):
in one year and all in all of the span
of twelve months. So I was thirty one at the time,
as a wild year. Bridget filed for office in April,
and in the meantime, while campaigning, she also filed to
be appointed to the position. That means that she could
step onto the school board right away, although it would
be temporary until she officially won the seat in the
election in November. Governor Rick Scott reached out to meet
(12:54):
her in person to vet her, and he said, I
like that you're not part of the establishment. I like
that you're a m and you're an outsider. And he
thought it was spart and quick witted and would work
hard and win, and so he acquitted me. He was
an unusual move for the governor of Florida to do this.
Typically the seat would have stayed open until the election.
(13:16):
We kept driving, Bridget continued the tour. Okay, we are
turning to Venice High School, large performing arts centers. The front.
You can tell again the theater is a huge thing
in Sarastutic County in the cultural arts, and then some
schools she deemed struggling. Some had great theater programs. One
had bulletproof class installed in the wake of the Parkland shooting,
(13:38):
an addition that Bridget was extremely proud of. So what
we're looking at is the single point entry. So that's
all bulletproof glass, which makes me so sad their schools
have to have that on the board. I was able
to get our capital projects to prioritize safeguarding our schools
with single point entriests. All of them have that administrative
entrance with bulletproof glass. There is a second layer so
(13:58):
that if it active shooter comes in that they are
able to be blocked or at least slow them down.
And it is a sad reality that we have to
do those things and spend. Eventually, we pulled into a
parking lot. This here where we are is the landing
So this is an administrative office. It's for Sara Soto's
school board, so our meetings are in here. It's a
(14:20):
little bit older brown building, not very aesthetically pleasing in
my opinion, but that doesn't need to baseelf central office.
This is the real bureauratic blob. This is really the
blobby part. Bridgets run for school board from being appointed
in April to the election in November was the battle
she eventually won. But coming onto the board with no
college degree and no public service experience, and for the
(14:41):
school board members already there, it was a hard pill
to swallow. But you walk into these automatic doors and
then there's two double doors that you go through and
go into the chambers, and you have the board seats
right in front of you. Um, where they're up at
the diets. And I remember, I know exactly where I sat,
remember walking straight to my seats, and there wasn't many
(15:04):
pleasantries or anything like that. Um, I stayed very quiet
and I took copious notes, of which I do always.
I knew I wasn't very very popular with the people
inside this building. They didn't. But my whole, my whole
philosophy was like they will once they get to know
me and they know who I am, like I'll be
able to win them over. Like But that just wasn't
the case. We'll get to that in a second. We'll
(15:26):
be back after the break. So Bridget told us the
people on the board were unprofessional, mean, even but she
might have left out a few details. She was supposed
to be learning the ways of the board, not the
warriors of the board, but the learning the educational system.
And then you're supposed to go for training so that
you understand where we're coming from in construction, where we're
(15:49):
coming from food services, um. And it's a whole litany legislation,
it's a whole litany of knowledge that you have to
have before you and starts to make decisions that are accurate,
decisions that reflect your community. That's Caroline Zucker. I've been
on the Sara Sauta Candy School Board for twenty two years.
(16:11):
During that time, I've had an opportunity to really engage
with our community and off schools and people. We gave
Caroline a call to ask her about Bridget. She retired
from the board a couple of years ago, and her
time there up until Bridget's arrival had been gratifying. But
(16:32):
once Bridget got there, everything changed. If I had had
another year that I probably would have had a heart attack.
According to Caroline, Bridget pushed back from the get go.
She wouldn't comply with how things are supposed to run.
She explained to us how the board typically works. We
didn't always agree with majority of the time we did.
If the superintendent brings before you will proposal that makes sense,
(16:56):
you vote for it. That's what you are there for.
You are there to moderate the superintendent. It's up to
the superintendent to be able to do his job and
work within his structure to make sure that everything is
done according to the rules and regulations of Florida. By
(17:17):
the way, Miss Sigla has no no formal education. She
didn't graduate from college. Typically when someone is new to
the board, they will attend to training to learn how
to do the job. Those trainings are run by the
Florida School Boards Association, which has been around since nine.
Bridget went to a training held by the association right
(17:38):
after she was elected, but she says she didn't agree
with how things were being done. I kept saying that
she'll be all right when she gets to know what
she's doing. She just thought she knew it all. Bridget
rejected the status quo. She told us she didn't believe
her job was to solely support the superintendent, and she
thought the school Board Association was training people all wrong.
(18:00):
So a month after being elected, she made her own
school Board Association a new consortium and invited some of
her conservative allies to join. I can't explain it to
you what a massive was becoming from a board that
was a congenial board that worked together. We were an
a rated board, we had good staff to what was
(18:22):
the chaos that was going on was just unbelievable. During
Bridget's time on the board. Over the next few years,
she continued to march the beat of her own drum.
Like Caroline said, she did not always support the superintendent.
She obstructed and denied many plans. She pushed for state
level policy changes. She worked on legislation that would be
(18:43):
a precursor to the Parental Rights and Education Act, the
so called Don't Say Gay Bill that was passed last year.
That's the bill that restricts how racism and gender identity
are taught in schools. It's controversial, and Caroline described the
bill's impact for us, You won't have the ability to
define who you are. Like of a boy is feels
(19:04):
like they are a girl. He has to stay a
boy because he can't use the girl's restroom, and they
give me all these scenarios of well, hey, it just
wants to use a girl's bathroom because he wants to
see what it's like. No, you don't understand these kids.
You need to take a course in lgbt Q. You
(19:28):
need to go there. You need to see these kids.
I've seen them. I watched them. What I saw one kid,
he was so overwrought he was trying to pull his
hair out of his head and get a rope to
hang himself because he was so upset about being in
the body he didn't want to be in. He didn't
belong to. Bridget's kids don't go to public school. She
(19:49):
told us those schools weren't meeting their educational needs. All
these years, she's been working to shape the schools her
own children might not even attend because ultimately, Caroline says
she wanted the board. She wants the board to be
a totally conservative board. She I was a Republican my
entire life until last year. Last year I switched to
(20:13):
a Democrat because I couldn't take the Shenanigans going on anymore.
And she's got her wish now. During the height of
the pandemic, when school board meetings heated up with mass
mandates enclosures, that's when Bridget helped co found Mombs for Liberty.
They provide guidance on how to fundraise for school boards,
(20:35):
track legislative issues, and review curriculum, and just a couple
of years they've attracted over a hundred thousand members. They
have chapters in almost every state, and over the mid
terms they endorsed hundreds of school board candidates, most of
them running on stances that fall under that parental rights umbrella.
Their goal is to limit government overreach. Caroline mentioned something important.
(20:59):
She said Bridget wants the board to be conservative, and
she's not wrong. That's very much part of how she's
cracking the code to school boards. Historically, most school boards
have been on partisan Bridget is changing that. By having
a conservative board majority, it's a lot easier to make
change to put parental rights in action. We spent the
(21:24):
rest of the afternoon driving around Sara Sota with Bridget.
We saw a lot of schools. It was a long
day and we made plans to see her again. When
we got back to our hotel, Kathleen and I were
both really struck by bridgets ambition, her burning drive to
give parents more control, and she reminded us of another
(21:46):
time in history. I think as a mother, you are
concerned about room children's future, rooms more about your coming along.
And we won't think get heads of proven that we've
had on the our prostitution, because our prostitution and that's
(22:07):
where our country graves at result roll performing and and
the conservative culturals, so we believe it. Next time on
Bedrock USA, we journey back to the nineteen fifties and
talk to the original conservative moms when parents feared the
spread of communism. And we're not done talking to bridget
(22:29):
just yet. But it is not the role of the
government to dictate bad parenting unless it's like true neglectisum
sort I don't. I think historically you see cultural shifts
and that we're with an overreaching government and like and
that's very extreme fashion when you think about like cultural
(22:49):
revolution in China and all those things. But I mean
those are the more that I don't want to go
down that path. I don't want to see our country
go there. This episode was reported, produced and hosted by
us sum At, The story in Cathleen Cullian, original music
and scoring by Zachary Walter, and audio engineering by Blake Maples.
(23:12):
Bed Rock USA is edited by Jennifer Sondag, head of
Bloomberg City Lab. Additional editing help by Peggy Collins, Nicole Flato,
Victor Vayez, and Bill Allison. Bed Rock USA is a
production of Bloomberg City Lab and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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