Old friends of the Zieglers—from when they called their social group “Melrose Place”—are shocked and saddened by the couple’s anti-LGBT turn and messy public downfall.
One of those pals, Nishit Patel, remembers a magical night in the early 2010s when they whooped it up at her parents’ house while the adults were away, swimming in the pool and singing and dancing in her mother’s furs. “That was Bridget,” Patel said of the now-41-year-old conservative education activist. “She was really, really sweet and kind.”
Now the Zieglers are embroiled in a sex scandal that falls outside of their carefully crafted facade of Republican “family values.”According to a police report, Christian kept a roster of women on his phone, titled “THE LIST,” and his victim was listed under a subhead labeled “Fuck.” “So when they started taking these extra-hardline social views,” he said, “it just hurt my feelings more than anything.”
“The Bridget I knew was warm and charming; quirky and kind—and never, ever expressed or exuded a modicum of homophobia,” Barrie said. “She was well aware that I was an out lesbian and never appeared uncomfortable around my girlfriend and me, who were attached at the hip in those days.” She added, “In fact, Bridget appeared to boast a slew of lively, close gay friends.
“When I met her, she was a girl that partied in Miami and worked at Gucci. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s go burn books and be mean to gay people,’” Harris said. “We had friends in our friend group that were gay. One of her best friends for a very long time was gay.” “Christian was always very conservative, and you could always tell that he was going to be involved in politics,” Harris said. “We jokingly called him the governor. When Bridget started getting involved, I think all of us were pretty surprised.”
But she soon earned a reputation supporting anti-LGBTQ policies, including the “outing” of trans students to their parents, and via Fox News appearances, where, “classrooms are not intended to be anyone’s social or political activism centers” during a segment on one California school district’s flag ban.
Sarasota residents confronted Bridget with similar concerns. At December’s school board meeting, one parent of an LGBTQ student said, “In spite of our family’s unconditional love and support, our child knows that ‘their kind’ is not welcome in Sarasota, or in Florida, and Ms. Ziegler, I hold you personally accountable for that.”
“Our friend group assumption has always been that he’s the puppet master or he’s the wizard behind the curtain...” Christian, Patel said, had bragged about facilitating Bridget’s appointment to the school board in 2014. “He wanted to go into politics, and she was his springboard,” Patel said. “I don’t think he would be where he is without her. On a one-on-one basis, she’s very relatable and likable.”
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