The Florida sex scandal awakens mothers’ freedom as the group’s influence diminishes

Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became equally known for pushing policies that opponents labeled as anti-LGBTQ.

So when one of the founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived divide between her public positions and her private life create intense tensions. pressured her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.

“Most of our community could care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy is front and center,” Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a meeting. tense school board meeting this week. Mrs. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign.

Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms. Ziegler — and Moms for Liberty — at the meeting, an outcry that underscored the group’s prominence in the most contentious debates of the pandemic era.

Perhaps no group has gained so much influence so quickly, transforming education issues from a sleepy political backwater into a rallying cry for Republican politicians. The organization quickly became a conservative powerhouse, a coveted endorsement and a mandatory stop on the GOP presidential campaign trail.

But now that Moms for Liberty is addressing the Zieglers scandal, the group’s power appears to be fading. Candidates backed by the group lost a series of key school board races in 2023. The losses have raised questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics.

Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the party’s nomination, makes only passing mention in his stump speeches of preserving “parental rights” — the slogan of the group’s cause. Issues such as school curricula, the rights of transgender students and education about race were far less prominent in the three Republican primaries than abortion rights, foreign policy and the economy. And the most prominent champion of conservative views on education — Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida — has yet to unite conservatives behind his struggling presidential bid.

John Fredericks, a Trump ally in Virginia, said the causes Moms for Liberty has become best known for — policies that ban books deemed pornographic, restrict the teaching of LGBTQ issues and monitor how race is taught in schools – had remained far away from many voters. biggest concerns.

“You closed schools and people were angry about it. The schools are now open,” he said. “The Moms for Liberty really need to focus their fire on math, science and reading, instead of focusing on critical race theory and drag queen story hours.”

He added: “It’s nonsense, all of it.”

Moms for Liberty’s two other founders, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, have distanced themselves from Ms. Ziegler, saying she has not been an officer in the national organization since early 2021. Mrs. Ziegler did not respond to requests for comment about the investigation against her husband or the calls for her resignation.

In a statement, Ms. Descovich and Ms. Justice rejected criticism that the group was hypocritical. They argue that it is not against racial justice or LGBTQ rights, but that it wants to restore parents’ control over their children’s education.

“To our opponents who have spewed hateful vitriol in recent days, we reject your attacks,” Ms. Descovich and Ms. Justice said. “We are deeply focused on basic parental rights, and that mission is and will always be bigger than one person.”

Ms. Justice declined to answer questions about their organization’s continued influence or their electoral losses.

Nearly 60 percent of the 198 school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in contested races in 10 states were defeated in 2023, according to an analysis by election-tracking website Ballotpedia.

The organization claims to have 300 chapters in 48 states and approximately 130,000 members.

Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a left-wing think tank, was recent research that the group had an outsized presence on the battlefield and in liberal provinces. But in those areas, the policies championed by Moms For Liberty are generally unpopular.

“Politics has turned against Moms for Liberty, and they are getting more people to vote against them than for them,” Mr. Valant said.

In November, the group announced it had removed the presidents of two Kentucky chapters after they were photographed with members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. That came just months after a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Indiana quoted Adolf Hitler in its first newsletter. The year before, Ms. Ziegler spoke publicly left denied the Proud Boys after she posed for a photo with a member of the group during her election night victory party.

The episodes have transformed the group’s image and alienated the voters it once claimed to represent. The group was once particularly strong in suburban Northern Virginia, where education issues helped propel Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to victory in the 2021 governor’s race. (This year, Mr. Youngkin failed in his high-profile attempt at a Republican takeover of the Virginia Statehouse.)

Anne Pogue Donohue, who ran for a school board seat in Loudoun County, Virginia, against a candidate backed by the group, said she saw a disconnect between Moms for Liberty’s cause and voters’ current concerns.

On social media, Ms. Donohue, a former government attorney and mother of two young children, faced a barrage of personal insults, death threats and accusations that she was trying to “groom” children to become transgender, she said. But in her personal interactions with voters, she added, a large majority of parents seemed more concerned with practical issues such as math and reading scores, support for special education and expanding vocational and technical programs.

Ms. Donohue won her seat by almost seven percentage points.

“Over there is now a pushback,” she said. “Moms for Liberty focuses heavily on culture war type issues, and I think most voters see that to the extent that we have problems in our education system that we need to solve, focusing on culture war issues is not enough. That.”

One place where Moms for Liberty remains in a stronger position is the state where the group has perhaps had the most impact: Florida.

Since its founding in 2020, the group has joined Mr. DeSantis in supporting his parental rights in education bill, which critics nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay.” The law prohibits classroom education on LGBTQ topics.

Mr. DeSantis then campaigned for conservative candidates for local school boards, turning nonpartisan races into ones heavily influenced by politics. Several school boards with a new conservative majority have removed their principals.

In Brevard County, the school board is now completely conservative, except for Jennifer Jenkins, who Mr. DeSantis has already named as someone he would like to help defeat in 2024.

Ms. Jenkins, an outspoken Moms for Liberty critic who wrested the school board seat from Ms. Descovich in 2020, said the organization, while small, had remained a fixture at school board meetings, with about 10 regulars attending sometimes bring people from the school board. Indian River and other nearby counties.

“Their members are definitely more extreme than ever before,” said Ms. Jenkins, who has often been a target of the group. They have posted up in front of her house, sent her threatening emails and, she said, took pictures of her in the supermarket just a few weeks ago.

On Tuesday, some Moms for Liberty members from Brevard and Indian River Counties attended a Brevard County School Board meeting to protest books they say should be removed from schools. Most of the books they mentioned had already been formally challenged.

Still, one by one, the group members stood behind the lectern and read explicit scenes from the books until the chairman of the board — who supported Moms for Liberty and Mr. DeSantis last year — warned them to stop.

That’s what the speakers wanted: If a school board denies a parent the right to read passages deemed “pornographic” this year, the school district will , ‘stop using the material’. In other words, halting reading would effectively result in the book being removed from schools, board members said.

“I strongly encourage all of you to look at this statute,” Julie Bywater, a member of the Brevard County chapter of Moms for Liberty, told the school board.

Such tactics have become typical of Moms for Liberty members. In response, opponents began showing up at school board meetings in an effort to counter the group’s message — including in Sarasota, where Ms. Ziegler’s critics appeared to try to push her out.

The school board, which includes several conservatives who have previously sided with Ms. Ziegler, voted 4-1 on Tuesday in favor of a nonbinding resolution urging her to resign; Ms. Ziegler was the only one on the board who voted against.