Bridget Ziegler’s gay colleague isn’t afraid of her. He uses her hate as fuel to make change.

Tom Edwards, a New York transplant who’s been utilizing his organizational skills since volunteering with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis fresh out of college, arrived in Florida a few years ago with his husband and settled in a modest house in Venice, close to canals where the 62-year-old rower regularly skims 50,000 meters a week.

Edwards describes Sarasota County politics as purple, but you’d never know it based on the proceedings at the Sarasota County School Board, which Edwards joined in 2020, and where his far-right colleagues have led the charge for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s Don’t Say Gay and “stop woke” agendas.

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One such colleague is Bridget Zielger, who co-founded the notorious anti-LGBTQ+ Moms for Liberty and fell from MAGA grace last fall as she and her husband became engulfed in a scandal featuring rape allegations, a lesbian affair, and, above all, “rampant hypocrisy,” in Edwards’ words.

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Now seeking a second four-year term, Edwards is running on his many accomplishments — including preparing students for “enrollment, enlistment, or employment” — and outrunning the “wackos” who hijacked Florida politics and education. He spoke to LGBTQ Nation from his home office.

LGBTQ NATION: You were elected to the school board in 2020, joining a three-to-two Democratic minority, which dwindled to a Democratic minority of one — you — in 2022 in the midst of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s assault on LGBTQ+ kids and teachers with the adoption of Don’t Say Gay and all the other hateful anti-woke legislation and policies he and his allies were pushing at the peak of his influence.

From that time last March, there is shocking video at a school board meeting in which a parent makes public comments that no one would blame you for filing a defamation suit over. She starts out slow, and by the end of the three minutes is screaming that you’re an LGBTQ+ groomer, and she’s going to demand police and Gov. DeSantis investigate you for, basically, child abuse — of course with zero evidence, just a bigoted hunch on her part. It really is appalling. Who was she and how did that episode affect you?

TOM EDWARDS: Her name has escaped me because there was several of those kinds of comments and they all kind of blur into the minority that they are here in Sarasota. But they’re loud, even though they’re the minority. What they were part of was the birth of Moms for Liberty.

Shortly thereafter, there was another meeting where a similar character showed up and did the same kind of thing, and I walked out of the meeting. Not because I was feeling offended but because I felt that I needed to protect our LGBTQ+ students and their allies. Because we’ve done a really good job of creating acceptance and understanding within public education, and all of a sudden you have these wackos screaming at the top of their lungs and confusing our students. So, I felt like I needed to shut the meeting down. And the best way I could do that, shy of a fire alarm, was just to get up and walk out.

That incident, for better or worse, made you a poster child for the resistance in Florida, fighting back against Don’t Say Gay and DeSantis and his allies, including your fellow school board member Bridget Ziegler, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, which started in Florida and spread across the U.S. with their book-banning agenda and other anti-LGBTQ+ tactics and rhetoric. What was it like watching Ziegler’s rise and simultaneously seeing your own power diminish as extremists won a four-out-of-five-seat majority on the school board?

Well, it’s interesting that you put it in the context of her influence rising and mine diminishing. I feel that the opposite happened. If you think about DeSantis, the first thing he did when he got back to Florida after running for president was he said book-banning went too far.

The second thing that happened: After a two-and-a-half-year lawsuit, Don’t Say Gay settled with it’s okay to say gay. And the following week, the Disney lawsuit settled, and the Senate did not confirm Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty with Bridget, onto the Ethics Committee.

So the pendulum is swinging back, and as the poster child, as you said, I think I had something to do with that. I stood up to the bullies, and I showed that there’s nothing to be afraid of from their useless, empty rhetoric.

In the video I mentioned, a lot of people are equally horrified and shouting down the woman who was defaming you. Are the far-right school board members an accurate representation of politics in Sarasota’s school districts?

The far-right school board members that I share the dais with are finally getting the correct message from the community. Because the people that were shouting those public speakers down are the majority of our community. They don’t like hate speech. They don’t like angry rhetoric. It’s a moderate, quite frankly, purple town, and they really want school board members and all elected officials, including the governor, to be more moderate and more middle-of-the-road-centric.

How do you explain how those four board members got into office if Sarasota is such a moderate town?

I would say that we went through a period of apathy right after Trump was elected. People thought that this version of extremism would pass. And so people stayed home from voting, they kept to themselves. Then the pandemic hit. You know, there was a lot of just hunkering down. And now that people are coming out of the pandemic, they’re standing up against the extremism and the nonsense.

I mean, everywhere you look, aside from the hardcore Trumpers that you can’t reason with — there’s no having a conversation with those folks – but everyone else, regardless of what side of the aisle they’re on, they’re trying to find the middle ground. They’re trying to get things back to, “Hey, we’re all neighbors and we disagree on one or two things, but we basically have the same shared, common values.”

Then last fall, like some kind of deus ex machina, all hell broke loose when a woman filed a rape allegation against Bridget Ziegler’s husband, Christian Ziegler (also a DeSantis ally and the chair of the Republican Party in Florida) and it came to light that Bridget had sex with her husband and the same woman in a three-way encounter the year before. Describe your reaction to hearing that news.

I can share with you now that I knew about the scandal a month before it went public in the press. And so I would tell you that when I first heard it, I thought someone was joking with me, like some awful, awful, practical joke, because you just can’t make this stuff up.

I never, ever was angry at Bridget, even when she was the poster child advocating for Don’t Say Gay and “Stop Woke.” I knew she was being managed by her husband and managed by the governor. So I wasn’t mad at her for doing her job. I disagreed with her. But you know, I disagree with a lot of people that I like (laughing).

But when you find out that the hypocrisy is rampant in their household, the thing that came to my mind first was how damaging it was to LGBTQ+ students, trans students, Black students to hear about their history — all these kids while they’re in their adolescent years, forming their identities and figuring themselves out — and how it was to be erased. It is unforgivable. To me, it’s not about who Bridget and her husband choose to sleep with. It’s that they deliberately hurt children. And that, to me is unforgivable.

You joined three of your fellow board members in voting in favor of a resolution asking Ziegler to resign. The only dissenting vote was her own. The board has no power to expel a member. Only the Florida governor can do that. What was the motivation of those three conservative members to vote in favor of her resigning?

In hindsight, I would say it was political theater. I don’t think they ever had any intention of having Mrs. Ziegler resign. If I knew about the scandal a month in advance, don’t you think the governor did? The reality is that I think they had a very buttoned-up plan to get Christian out of his job. The party got rid of him, not the governor.

And the truth that we know is that if Mrs. Ziegler had vacated her position before July 22, the governor would replace her but her seat would go to a special election. If she resigns after July 22, the governor refills her spot but it doesn’t have to go to special election and that person would continue out her term. I would assume the plan is for her to stay at least until after July 22.

One sign outside of a board meeting protesting Bridget read, “Don’t Say Three-Way,” which is so funny after years of Don’t Say Gay and Ron DeSantis getting shoved down our throats. Is there some schadenfreude to be enjoyed after the Zieglers were outed for their hypocrisy and DeSantis’s presidential campaign tanked?

You know, I really want to run around and sing, “Ding dong, the witch is dead,” and be all cheers and jeers, but people were harmed — students, same-sex couples with children in public schools, grandparents that have a trans grandchild. They are coming back to the public square now that it’s safe.

Now that the house has fallen on the Zieglers, to use that Wizard of Oz metaphor once again, they feel safe to go in and tell her the harm that she and the governor and their policies have inflicted. So I can’t get excited until the pendulum has fully swung back and retribution – and perhaps an apology and a whole lot of counseling – is given to those families that were affected.

I thought you were going to say counseling for Bridget Ziegler.

There isn’t enough counseling in the world.

Describe how reason regains the majority on the Sarasota school board. How many seats are being contested this year, and who are the candidates running?

Well, I’m running for reelection and as I said earlier, I feel like I was one of the forces here in Florida, along with my community who backed me, who stood strong and sent that message loud and clear to Tallahassee that they’re wrong, these bills are wrong, and they’re hurting children.

So I feel like my work is only half done. That’s why I’m running again. Karen Rose is the chair of our school board this year, and she’s also running for reelection, but she voted 97 and a half percent of the time with Bridget Ziegler. Every single thing that Bridget stood for, Karen stood for. So, if Bridget was going to be up for election, you could bet she would not be reelected. And I am pretty darn sure that Karen Rose won’t be reelected because the community is tired of these extremist values.

Karen’s opponent is Liz Barker, who is a mom of three children and a former school psychologist. I love the fact that she’s a mom and she’s the president of a PTO. You can’t get a better school board member than Liz Barker.

If both those seats were occupied by Democrats, you’d still be faced with a three-to-two Republican majority.

I think Bridget is a non-event if she stays. I think that her credibility and her ability to influence votes and influence our community is over. And those days are well behind her. And the other two people — if Karen is off the board — I perceive them to be more moderate if they were led in a more moderate way.

Does every student have to go to college?

No. Absolutely not. I think that students who are college-directed find their way there naturally, because they’re academically curious, they’re overachievers, and they see their goals a little clearer. But that doesn’t mean they’re better than any other students. It just means that they’re a little bit more directed.

My mission since I’ve been a school board member is that every student should graduate with a plan. They should be enrolled, enlisted, or employed. And one of the jobs that we should be doing in public education is helping students who are not college-directed find which one of those ideas works for them. Do you want to be enrolled? Do you want to be enlisted? Do you want to be employed? As a matter of fact, today we had a helicopter rescue from a car crash simulation for one of our healthcare academies here in Venice. And there were 80 kids who are part of the Healthcare Academy who were part of the rescue or observed.

Another one that I’ve created is a Trades Academy, where kids that are not college-directed find out what trades are available to them. And that even if they become a plumber or an HVAC guy or an electrician, that not only do they learn a skill, but they can eventually own their own business and have a fleet of those folks.

So there’s great opportunity if we provide the right thoughts and give students the right concepts of what could possibly be. The last few generations were mistakenly told, “If you grow up and go to college, you’ll get a good job.” But there’s a lot of good jobs out there that don’t require college degrees.

You’ve spent a lot of time out in the district interacting with students, parents, teachers and administrators. What are you hearing from folks on the ground and in the schools and not just online? Are they with you? Or are they with the keyboard warriors?

I honestly feel that the community is behind me. I’m often referred to as “the voice of reason” because I’ve survived this insanity of extremism, and, quite frankly, the abuse from my colleagues on the school board. And I did it because I want the very best for all students. And I needed to protect the teachers from the culture war. They were vilified in the culture war. They were told that they didn’t know how to select books, and they didn’t know how to speak to students age-appropriately. It was just horrible.

Our teachers are so, so dedicated and frankly underpaid for all of the great work that they do. So I just felt like I needed to be that guy. And the community tells me all the time that they’re grateful that I stuck it out and that I’m doing it again, because they know my heart’s in the right place.

Share a little bit more about LGBTQ+ teachers in the community. How are they feeling right now?

You know, I have to honestly say, I don’t think that the thaw has completely happened. Those teachers were in their own protective silo. They were self-censoring. They were self-protecting, all while doing everything they could to provide the best possible academic experience for their students. But they were protecting themselves. Many of them are near retirement, and they didn’t want to lose their jobs. And think about how nasty people were to me. Could you imagine what they would do to a parent or to a teacher that they thought had done something inappropriate or against the law?

You’re married, and if you went into one of these classrooms, you couldn’t talk about your husband, could you?

That didn’t stop me. I didn’t volunteer it, but I was recently in a second-grade class where I read a book to the classroom, and the teacher said, “Well, you know, Mr. Edwards is a school board member. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Edwards about what it’s like to be a school board member?” And one little man that held up his hand said, “Are you married? Do you have a wife?” I said, “I am married. But no, I have a husband.” And he went, “Oh, okay.” That was the end of it. But I’m not going to lie to kids, for sure. That’s not my role either.

Do you think compulsory national service in the armed services, or teaching, or another way to contribute to society could be positive for young people and the country?

I do. That’s what I’m saying about helping kids get a plan. It should be our responsibility to provoke students with as many possibilities as possible.

Let’s say social media disappears tomorrow. On balance, a good thing or a bad thing?

Social media is a tool if used correctly. It’s our job to teach students the pitfalls of social media and how to use the tool correctly. It’s going to be the exact same thing with AI if we don’t figure it out as a society.

What’s the best thing about representing the students, parents and teachers of Sarasota’s District 3?

It’s an honor to be a public servant. I am so proud of all the accomplishments I’ve made with the academies, and the ability to show students all the possibilities open to them. I love being a school board member. I wish that I didn’t have to do it with the people I do it with on the dais, and I wish the politics would go away, but they can’t hurt me. I’m already baked. It’s really that I want to make sure people understand that it is diversity, it is equity, and it is inclusion that really counts.

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