Zander Moricz Brilliantly Rips Into Bridget Ziegler
Former student Moricz blasted Sarasota County School Board Member Ziegler for her harmful anti-LGBTQ advocacy.
A former Florida high school student artfully dressed down a school board member who is currently enmeshed in a sex scandal for her anti-LGBTQ actions.
Zander Moricz, a 2022 graduate of Pine View School in Osprey, Florida, was one of more than 70 people who spoke at last week’s meeting of the Sarasota County School Board regarding whether board member Bridget Ziegler should resign from her position.
Ziegler, who helped found Moms for Liberty, and her husband Christian, chair of the Florida Republican Party, came under fire for having engaged in a three-way sexual encounter with another woman.
The woman also claims she was raped by Christian Ziegler after he showed up at her house after Bridget had to withdraw from a planned repeat get-together between the three.
Last week, Bridget Ziegler’s four school board colleagues symbolically voted for a resolution urging her to resign from her position. They argued that her presence on the school board would be a distraction that could negatively impact the board’s attempts to focus on improving student achievement in the district.
The final vote was 4-1, with Ziegler voting against it, but the resolution was non-binding, meaning it did not have the force of law. Ziegler has refused to step down.
At the meeting, Moricz began by addressing Ziegler directly, accusing her of having re-tweeted a “hate article” about him while he was still a high school senior, before criticizing her for a litany of actions she’s taken since being appointed to the school board.
“You are a reminder that some people view politics as a service to others, while some view it as an opportunity for themselves,” Moricz said.
“On this board, you have spent public funds that could have been used to increase teacher pay to change our district lines for political gain; remove books from schools; target trans and queer children; erase black history; and elevate your political career, all while sending your children to private schools because you do not believe in the public school system that you’ve been leading.
“My question is: Why doesn’t an elected official, using our money to harm our students and our teachers for her gain, seem to matter as much to us as her having a threesome does?” he added, referencing the ongoing controversy in which the Zieglers are involved.
“Bridget Ziegler, you do not deserve to be on the Sarasota County School Board, but you [also] do not deserve to be removed from it for having a threesome,” he said. “That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician’s job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives.
“So to be extra clear, Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job, not because you had sex with a woman.”
Watch a TikTok video from influencer Josh Helfgott, which clipped Moricz’s speech from video of the school board meeting, below:
@joshhelfgott Mom’s for Liberty school board member DESTROYED by first openly gay class president at Pine View High School, Zander Moricz 🏳️🌈👏👏👏 Zander is going to Harvard. Bridget is not. The school board just voted for her to “Resign.” Under DeSant1s, they cannot fire her.
The organization Bridget Ziegler co-founded, Moms for Liberty, bills itself as a “parental rights” organization. The group advocates for greater parental control over curriculum, the erasure of lessons or removal of books that conservatives deem controversial, and opposition to affirming LGBTQ students’ identities.
Its leaders frequently employ hostile rhetoric against their opponents, particularly LGBTQ people, accusing them of being “groomers” who seek to expose children to age-inappropriate content.
The group has been a vocal proponent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law banning any LGBTQ content from the classroom in all K-12 public schools. Bridget Ziegler stood alongside Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he signed the bill into law.
Moricz, who came out as gay in high school and served as senior class president, had previously attracted criticism from conservative activists for helping organize a student-led walkout in protest of the passage of “Don’t Say Gay.”
He attracted headlines after being tapped to address his fellow students at graduation, only to have the principal threaten to pull the plug on his speech if he mentioned any of his pro-LGBTQ activism or acknowledged his sexual orientation.
Moricz eventually found a way around the prohibition on LGBTQ content by referring to himself as having “curly hair” rather than referring to himself using the word “gay.”
Bridget Ziegler is currently resisting calls to resign, and is unlikely to be removed from office by DeSantis, the one person who could remove her from the board.
DeSantis also appointed Ziegler to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board, which was formed by DeSantis and filled with conservative appointees, to oversee the tax district containing much of Walt Disney World’s Florida properties. Critics of the move cast the creation of the new district as an attempt to retaliate against Disney for speaking out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
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