When once persuaded to join a social club that disappointed him, the comedian Groucho Marx resigned, saying half in jest: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
Christian Ziegler, 40, of Sarasota, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, should follow Marx’s logic and resign — and his case is no laughing matter.
For Ziegler, the club — that is, the party — doesn’t want him.
The party executive board made that clear at a meeting in Orlando Sunday when it suspended Ziegler as chairman, demanded he resign, stripped him of all duties and cut his $120,000 salary to one dollar. The board then set a Jan. 8 meeting in Tallahassee for the full party committee to fire him.
It is stunning that Ziegler would compound his personal embarrassment and the party’s sullied image by refusing to go quietly.
Any news story that combines sex and politics is very hard to resist, and this one has the deeply disturbing possibility of sexual assault.
Each day brings new lurid headlines and reports (denied by Ziegler) that he wants a lavish buyout — “to loot the joint on his way out,” as a former party official told NBC News. The network reports that two former Trump administration officials, Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski, have urged Ziegler to hang tough and refuse to resign.
Granted, Sarasota police have said nothing lately about their investigation of a woman acquaintance’s claim that he raped her. So Ziegler at the moment is not even charged with a crime, let alone convicted. But that doesn’t mean he’s still fit to be the public face of anything.
A dead-weight liability
It is what he has admitted that makes him a dead-weight liability to a political party that claims to promote family values and is so closely identified with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture war agenda, which Florida Republicans wage with a vengeance reminiscent of the Puritans of early New England.
Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget, an elected School Board member and Moms for Liberty co-founder who sought to impose a moral code on her community, have confirmed the other woman’s claim that she took part in a three-way sexual encounter with them last year.
The accuser said she agreed to another, but that when Ziegler said he would be visiting her apartment alone on Oct. 2, she told him not to. That’s when she says he showed up anyway and assaulted her. Her interest in a threesome had been in her, not him, she told police.
The Zieglers are hardly the only prominent political figures caught up in a sex scandal. Dozens of women have accused former President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct and a jury awarded $5 million to one of them. He’s accused of arranging a hush money payment to a porn-movie actress with whom he cheated on his wife, Melania.
Hypocrisy is not a crime, either — even when it’s of staggering proportions, as in the Zieglers’ case.
The height of hypocrisy
But innocence of a crime doesn’t necessarily erase conspicuous tawdriness and hypocrisy. The leadership of a party so deeply invested in moral posturing is no place for a man whose penchant for threesomes has been exposed.
Nor is a county-wide school board any such place for a woman who has used her elected office to demonize LGBTQ people and to banish offending books from school shelves and libraries.
But Bridget Ziegler won’t see the light, either. Her four school board colleagues called for her resignation last week. She voted against their motion and is staying put.
Notably, though, they didn’t ask DeSantis to suspend her, even though he has a reputation for doing that to elected Democratic officeholders who haven’t been charged with crimes. But he hasn’t made a move toward suspending Ziegler either from the school board or from the board of his Disney oversight district, to which he appointed her. It’s time for Republican caucus-goers in Iowa to demand an explanation from DeSantis.
No discussion of the Zieglers’ hypocrisy is complete without mentioning how Trump, the most flagrant lecher in American political history, continues to rule his party like it were a personal cult.
Perhaps his example is why the Zieglers are trying to ride it out. Notably, Trump, who helped Ziegler become state party chairman, has had nothing to say about his scandalous personal life. Trump’s silence speaks volumes about him and the sordid state of Republican Party politics.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at .
