(Headline USA) The Republican Party of Florida is scheduled to hold a special meeting Monday to vote on removing Chairman Christian Ziegler and select a new leader as police investigate a rape accusation against him.
The meeting is expected to be held behind closed doors at a Tallahassee conference center.
The party suspended Ziegler last month and demanded his resignation, saying he can’t effectively lead during a critical election year with the allegations, which Ziegler denies, swirling around him.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and other Republican leaders have called on Ziegler to step down, but he has refused.
“We have to move past this and have to focus on 2024. Florida’s one of the most important states for the Republicans and we have to continue to bring home victories, especially for Rick Scott and the top of the ticket with Trump as our nominee, eventually,” said state Sen. Joe Gruters, who preceded Ziegler as party chair.
Scott is up for re-election this year. Former President Donald Trump, a Florida resident, and DeSantis are both running in the GOP primary, with Trump expected to be the nominee based on polling.
Ziegler and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, have admitted to police that they previously had a consensual sexual relationship with Christian Ziegler’s accuser.
The Sarasota Police Department is investigating the woman’s accusation that Ziegler raped her at her apartment in October.
Police documents say the Zieglers and the woman had planned a sexual threesome that day, but Bridget Ziegler was unable to attend. The accuser claimed Christian Ziegler arrived anyway and assaulted her.
Christian Ziegler has not been charged with a crime and says he is innocent, contending the encounter was consensual.
Bridget Ziegler, an elected member of the Sarasota School Board, is not accused of any crime. The board voted to ask her to resign last month but she refused.
In December, Brooke Weiss, a Moms for Liberty spokesperson, told Headline USA that Ziegler’s current involvement with the influential parent’s rights group was limited at best after stepping back from the organization’s management board in January 2021.
Ziegler “basically signed the founding documents and then left our organization within the first month,” Weiss said. “… The left would love to take us down, but this scandal has absolutely nothing to do with us.”
Weiss said that Moms for Liberty took “all sexual assault allegations seriously.”
Nonetheless, the group refused to allow the smear campaign to distract from its message and fundamental objectives,” which included efforts to curtail the promotion of sexual deviancy in the nation’s public education system.
“Moms for Liberty is going to continue to stay mission focused on unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights,” Weiss said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
