January marked three years since Moms for Liberty formed.

Moms for Liberty has dominated headlines, school board meetings and grassroots politics since its inception. The group, founded in Florida in January 2021, has rubbed shoulders with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trump as its influence has spread exponentially.

But now, on its third anniversary, Moms for Liberty loses more elections than it wins, and some chapters are seceding from the national organization over public controversy stemming from a three-way sex scandal involving one of the organization’s co-founders and her husband. Bridget Ziegler, who also sits on the Sarasota School Board, is refusing to resign her seat as her husband faces an allegation, but no charge, of rape.

Despite the noise, the group’s founders and its local chapters are preparing to head into another election cycle with the same battle cry as at their founding: fighting for parental rights in education. They are not backing down.

The conservative parent group has always been in the middle of conflict and controversy. It pushed back against COVID-19 mitigation efforts such as masking in schools after its founding, rejected the inclusion of LGBTQ topics in education, fought to remove so-called critical race theory from both the classroom and teacher training and pushed for the removal of books in schools members felt were inappropriate.

Some lauded the group of parents for fighting these “culture wars,” while others accused them of targeting marginalized groups and attempting to defund public education. They were even designated as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the summer of 2023.

While some of their efforts fell flat, others succeeded, particularly in their home state of Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis has been an outspoken fan. The group helped push legislation like Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by critics, which barred the teaching of LGBTQ topics in grades K-3. It was expanded in 2023 through all grades, keeps transgender students, staff and faculty from going by a preferred pronoun, and is used by groups such as Moms for Liberty in book challenges.

Nationally, Moms for Liberty, which was started by three moms — Brevard County’s Tina Descovich, Indian River’s Tiffany Justice, and Sarasota’s Ziegler — now boasts 300 chapters in 48 states, with about 130,000 members. Some 31 of Florida’s 67 counties have chapters, according to the group’s website.

And while the controversies have inflicted some wounds, go to a school board meeting in Florida and Moms for Liberty is likely to be there.

The activities of local chapters are largely left up to individual chapter chairs, Descovich said. The organization provides a flowchart to help chapters determine if a topic falls under education issues or parental rights. If it falls outside of those areas, the chapters can’t work on that issue under the Moms for Liberty name.

“Sometimes chapters get a little astray one way or the other, but for the most part, that little graphic is shared far and wide in our chapters, and our chapter leaders know it very well and share it with their members, and it really is keeping everybody focused on those two things,” Descovich said.

“Schools are making decisions that parents should be making, and without parents’ knowledge,” Descovich said. “Some of those things (are) changing your name or your pronoun without your parent even being advised, let alone asked — that’s very concerning to a lot of parents.”

Waning national influence for Moms for Liberty

Moms for Liberty proved itself a force when it scored major election successes in 2022.

Out of the 500 candidates they endorsed, 275 won, with 17 school boards flipping to “parental rights-supportive majorities,” according to their website. They reported a more than 50% win rate nationally, with the highest percentage of wins in Florida (80%).

Several of the school boards Moms for Liberty helped flip fired their superintendent shortly after the new members were sworn in. In both Sarasota and Brevard, the motion to terminate their superintendents came just minutes after the gavel changed hands.

Today, though, there are signs of diminishing influence. Where there was once a sea of blue Moms for Liberty shirts at school board meetings across Florida, it’s often hard to spot more than a few “Joyful Warriors” at the same meetings now.

Moms for Liberty’s website lacks any assessment of its impact on the 2023 elections, though USA TODAY reported that only 50 of the 139 school board candidates Moms for Liberty endorsed nationwide were elected in the fall.

For the whole year, 44% of Moms for Liberty-backed candidates won their races, according to the group.

While at one point, parents stood behind the idea of “liberty” from mask mandates and school closures, the push for Moms for Liberty’s ideals may be waning within the Republican party, said Aubrey Jewett, associate professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.

“Even in (the Republican) legislature there, you got some Republicans, not just Democrats, but Republicans sort of rethinking the book bans,” he said. “It is a sign that even among conservative Republicans in the legislature, I think they realize that it’s gotten out of hand.”

“Two things often happen with a movement — one, you keep pushing and pushing and eventually, you’re outside the mainstream of what regular voters are about or feel comfortable supporting, and two, sometimes you just run out of steam,” Jewett said.

Still, as recently as June, GOP presidential hopefuls Trump, DeSantis — who was then a front-runner — and Nikki Haley came courting the moms at the group’s convention in Philadelphia.

Bridget Ziegler’s troubles cast shadow on Moms for Liberty

Bridget Ziegler, a school board member in Sarasota County, wife to former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Christian Ziegler and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, found herself embroiled in a scandal this fall that led many leaders within Moms for Liberty to distance themselves from her.

In November, her husband Christian was accused of rape by a woman with whom Ziegler said she and her husband had a three-way sexual relationship. 

Sexual assault charges against Christian Ziegler have since been dropped, but he’s still under investigation for a voyeurism charge for recording his sexual encounter with the woman.

Many have been quick to point out hypocrisy from Bridget Ziegler, who also has a history of making anti-transgender posts on social media.

“I find it deeply ironic that you, as a champion of the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, have been outed in the same way trans kids are outed in Sarasota County Schools,” August Ray, a senior at Sarasota High School, said during a December school board meeting.

The board approved a resolution asking Ziegler to resign in a 4-1 vote with only Ziegler in dissent, but she’s held strong in not stepping down from her seat. At the board’s most recent January meeting, public comment lasted more than three hours and drove the meeting to end at almost 11 p.m. Ziegler, however, operated as if it were business as usual.

“I have come in every single day with the focus to work together as a board, to focus our mission with what our mission is, where we can agree and focus on academics,” she said.

Support and distancing from Bridget Ziegler

Fellow Moms for Liberty co-founders Justice and Descovich were quick to distance themselves from Ziegler, emphasizing in a Dec. 5 email that she had resigned as co-founder within a month of Moms for Liberty’s foundation but had “remained an avid warrior for parental rights across the country.” While they said they were shaken by the allegations against her husband, they condemned the “hateful vitriol” from those opposed to their organization and affirmed they were committed to all parents in building relationships to “ensure the survival of our nation and a thriving education system.”

Descovich declined to comment further on the situation when she spoke with FLORIDA TODAY. Justice did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Florida chapters had little to say regarding the situation in its aftermath, with most referring to Justice and Descovich’s statement.

Jennifer Kelly, chair of the Volusia chapter, said she tries to keep her focus on the chapter’s activities and not look too much at what other chapters or other parts of the organization are doing.

“I don’t pay too much attention to all the other stuff because we are focused on what we have here,” she said. “(Ziegler) left the organization within the first month, like before our chapter even came on, so I didn’t even know about her for a long time. So tying that in with like, what our goals are kind of, I see them as separate things.”

But not every chapter shares that view. The same day as the national Moms for Liberty email went out, the Northumberland County, Pa. Moms for Liberty chapter seceded from the national organization, citing concerns about the group’s response to the rape allegation against Christian Ziegler.

Clarissa Paige, the chapter chair, told NBC News in December the chapter’s members would be starting a group called the Northumberland County Education Alliance. It would function with many of the same goals regarding education, like pushing for conservative policies and parental rights at school board meetings, but would no longer be under the umbrella of Moms for Liberty.

Other chapters say they are staying put.

“We get much support from the national Moms for Liberty team, and as one of the two founding chapters and being the home of one of our two co-founders, the foundation for the organization is here and (in) Brevard,” said Jennifer Pippin, chair of the Indian River chapter. “The mission of Moms for Liberty hasn’t changed in three years.” 

Political experts say they’ll be watching to see what impact Ziegler’s association with the group has in upcoming elections.

“To be leading the charge for traditional morals and attacking LGBTQ behavior and students, and then to have it come out that you have engaged in LGBTQ behavior yourself — I mean, hypocrisy is all around society, and certainly in politics, but that went beyond just the normal hypocrisy we see in politics,” he said.

Florida impact: fewer liberties for teachers, LGBTQ students

Florida schools became a battleground for Moms for Liberty, where their focus on parental involvement has resulted in more restrictions on teachers. The moms group has faced criticism for numerous actions, like their push to limit what teachers can and can’t say in class, denying kids access to certain books, carving away at LGBTQ student rights and more. 

Some see their actions as a push to defund public education, citing concerns about Florida’s universal vouchers and the group’s “demonization” of public schools.

Liz Mikitarian, a Brevard resident and former teacher of about 25 years, founded Stop Moms for Liberty in May 2021.

“I think that this is all basically a privatization movement,” she said. “The more they demonize public education, the more they’re ruining it and they’re destroying it. I’m the first to say that there can always be improvement in any system. But this is not the way to do it.”

Descovich knows the reputation Moms for Liberty has when it comes to teachers, but it’s not one she agrees with. 

“I know people think we’re attacking schools all the time, but it’s not the school’s fault necessarily,” she said, adding many parents have “abdicated” their responsibilities to schools. “Parents have been letting schools do more and more things, and so schools are doing more and more things, and the line is just getting too far of what schools think they’re responsible for with children.”

Mikitarian said she views Moms for Liberty’s actions as prompted by their fears about societal changes.

“They don’t like the changes in society that they have seen, and so they I guess are blaming school systems for changes in society, but it’s exactly the opposite,” she said. “A public school system needs to address what is happening in society. Everyone who comes through the classroom door has to have their needs met by a public school system, and that’s what they’re objecting to, because they don’t accept things.”

What happens locally with Moms for Liberty

With the passage of HB 1069, it’s been a popular move for chapters to show up to read explicit passages of books at school board meetings since the start of the 2023-2024 school year. According to the law, if a reader is stopped by a school board member because the passage is sexually explicit or pornographic, it must be removed from the district.

Moms for Liberty and other groups have attempted to get books removed using this law in counties like Brevard and Indian River. The group tried the same tactic in Seminole County, but because board members did not stop them from reading, books were not removed by the district.

Books aren’t the only issue Florida chapters are focused on. Indian River’s chapter, one of the first two chapters and boasting more than 4,600 members, was involved in the passage of last year’s education bills by advocating for the legislation to their representatives. Palm Beach’s new chapter, run by state house candidate Meg Weinberger, is working to put a focus on educational excellence “rather than pushing a political agenda on our children.”

“The chapter has the autonomy within that to fight what they want to fight in their community,” Descovich said. “It varies wildly when you go from district to district and really look at some of the work they’re doing.”

Moms for Liberty chapters also work with other groups. They’ve collaborated or received support from Moms for America, the 917 Society, Citizens Defending Freedom and other groups focused on conservative values and parental rights.

Those opposed to them have also gotten more organized.

For example, Mikitarian’s group, with a national membership of about 20,000, is just one of many that have formed in response to Moms for Liberty.

“We found that nationally, there were people in counties right next to each other that were doing the same work, but they didn’t even know about each other,” she said. “So the Stop Moms for Liberty movement has done the connection piece for people so that they can support one another, and that the fight is that much stronger.”

Election: pushing for 2024 candidates

Despite their low success rates in the 2023 elections, Moms for Liberty is still holding out hope for wins in the 2024 races. They’ve put together a school board candidate campaign kit, with a workbook and handbook.

“The first thing I did when I thought I wanted to run is I Googled, ‘What does a school board member do?’ And I found nothing,” Descovich said. “I think when there’s help and support and information, you can get better candidates, so we want to educate people.”

She added that the group has several staff members traveling around the country holding “winning workshops.” These workshops aren’t just for potential candidates, but also for anyone who is interested in learning more about how school boards function, she said.

“I believe that if people are informed and they have the knowledge, that we will bring better candidates all around to school districts,” Descovich said. “We could really use some quality candidates serving in those positions to help raise reading scores and help them better manage the budget and do all types of things.”

While Jewett believes Moms for Liberty has lost much of the influence it once held, the tide could shift in their favor again, he said.

“It looks like … they might be waning in influence, and that wouldn’t be unusual,” he said. “But, on the other hand, occasionally, people rebound.”

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.

Follow Herald-Tribune Education Reporter Steven Walker on X at @swalker_7. He can be reached at sbwalker@gannett.com.

Katherine Kokal of Palm Beach Post, Colleen Wixon of TC Palm and Mary Ellen Ritter of Daytona Beach News-Journal contributed to this report.