At the beginning of this year, I wrote that Bridget Ziegler was on track to hand Democrats control of the Sarasota County School Board.
Now there are numbers to prove it.
Recent countywide polling obtained by Florida Politics shows the Sarasota County School Board Chair with dismal approval ratings, at just 22% favorable, with 49% of respondents indicating an unfavorable opinion. Those are terrible numbers for any public figure. They’re even worse for someone still trying to play kingmaker in Sarasota School Board politics. Some might even say they are catastrophic.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in the District 1 race for the seat she currently holds.
While school board races are technically nonpartisan, that distinction is essentially symbolic. In District 1, voters appear to have a serious Democrat and a serious Republican running. In fact, across all three school board races in Sarasota County this cycle, voters are seeing credible, qualified candidates step forward.
And then there is Teresa DeWitt.
DeWitt does not look like a serious contender. She looks like what she is: Bridget Ziegler’s recruit, carrying the baggage of a political brand voters have already rejected.
When voters were asked in the same survey whether they would be more or less likely to support Teresa DeWitt if they knew Ziegler supported her, the numbers were brutal. Just 10% said they’d be more likely to cast a ballot for DeWitt, while 56% said they’d be less likely to support the Ziegler-aligned candidate. But the most alarming number may be this one: Even among Republicans, Ziegler’s support was a net negative. Just 18% said her support made them more likely to support DeWitt, while 34% said it made them less likely.
That is a political five-alarm fire.
DeWitt is a former vice chair of the Sarasota chapter of Moms for Liberty, the group Ziegler co-founded, and she plainly comes from the same local faction Ziegler built. That raises an obvious question: Just how far down the bench did Ziegler have to go to find someone still willing to be publicly tied to her?
The answer is not flattering.
DeWitt was a registered independent as recently as three years ago. She was so disengaged from school board politics she didn’t even bother voting in the 2024 race between Karen Rose and Liz Barker, a consequential contest that Rose narrowly lost. Now she wants voters to trust her with a seat on that same board.
So far, neither voters nor donors seem interested.
DeWitt has raised a measly $2,600. Her Republican rival, Heidi Brandt, has raised nearly $50,000.
That is not a gap. That is an embarrassment.
Brandt looks like a real candidate with real support, real credibility, and a donor base willing to invest in her campaign. DeWitt looks like a flimsy factional project that would have collapsed already if Ziegler’s orbit did not still have a few people clinging to it.
And that gets to the real problem.
District 1 is Ziegler’s seat. Her interest in shaping the outcome is obvious. So is her refusal to do Republicans the simplest favor imaginable by just making clear she does not intend to run again.
Instead, she has left the door cracked open while a weak candidate tied to her faction muddies the field and complicates the only plausible path Republicans have to keeping the seat.
If Republicans are serious about holding District 1, the solution should be obvious. They need a candidate who can win on her own strength, not one lugging around Ziegler’s baggage before Summer even begins.
That candidate is plainly not DeWitt.
At this point, DeWitt is not offering Republicans a path to victory. She is offering them a path to a split field, wasted time, wasted money, and a better chance of losing a seat they should be able to keep.
If DeWitt is serious about doing what’s best for Republicans in this race, the smart play would be obvious by now. But if she is following Ziegler’s lead, self-awareness is probably too much to ask.
At this point, the question is no longer whether Bridget Ziegler is toxic.
The question is why Teresa DeWitt thought building a candidacy around that toxicity was ever a winning idea.
