Four years after Gov. Ron DeSantis put his political operation behind a conservative takeover of the Sarasota County School Board, voters have broken that majority apart.
Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry each won School Board seats outright Tuesday, defeating candidates endorsed by the Republican Party of Sarasota County. And in the race to replace Board Chair Bridget Ziegler, Jimmy Glover finished first and advanced to November against Republican-backed Heidi Brandt.
The results guarantee a different balance of power on a Board that has spent much of the past four years at the center of Florida’s fights over education, parental rights and culture-war politics.
School Board races are nonpartisan and open to all voters, but the campaign around them has been anything but politically neutral in recent years.
DeSantis played a direct role in creating the majority now disappearing as he prepares to leave office. In 2022, he endorsed Ziegler and Tim Enos. DeSantis’ political committee financed campaign mail supporting them and Robyn Marinelli. All three won, joining Karen Rose to give conservatives a 4-1 majority on the five-member Board.
DeSantis remained involved as the Board’s politics shifted. He backed Rose in her unsuccessful 2024 re-election campaign, then appointed her to a different School Board seat in 2025 after voters had removed her from office and Enos resigned.
The appointment restored the conservative bloc’s 3-2 majority. However, Ziegler and Marinelli did not seek another term. Rose, serving by appointment, also did not seek a full term. That left voters with three open seats and an opportunity to reshape a School Board whose politics have often drawn attention well beyond Sarasota County.
Moms for Liberty gets booted by both parties
Tennimon and Mayberry will now join Liz Barker and Tom Edwards, who have routinely opposed the conservative bloc.
Tennimon won the District 4 race with more than 56,000 votes, or 55%, defeating Frank DiCicco, who received about 45%. Mayberry won District 5 with nearly 58,000 votes, or 57%, over Michelle Pozzie, who received 43%.
Meanwhile, Glover led the three-way District 1 race with nearly 45,000 votes, or 44%, followed by Brandt with 32% and Teresa DeWitt with 25%. Because no candidate won a majority, Glover and Brandt advance to the Nov. 3 General Election.
The shift leftward is particularly striking in Sarasota County, where Republicans hold a commanding registration advantage. At the July book-closing deadline, the county had nearly 163,000 registered Republicans and fewer than 81,000 Democrats, along with more than 85,000 voters registered without a major party affiliation.
The Republican Party of Sarasota County endorsed Brandt, DiCicco and Pozzie in May and explicitly warned supporters that control of the School Board was at stake. Two members of that slate lost outright Tuesday.
Brandt survived the Primary, but DeWitt’s elimination was a setback for the Moms for Liberty wing of Sarasota’s conservative education movement. DeWitt previously served as a Vice Chair of the Sarasota Moms for Liberty chapter and entered the race with support from prominent Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Greg Steube and Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman.
Brandt, meanwhile, emerged from a GOP intraparty split over who should succeed Ziegler, winning the formal backing of the local Republican Party and support from Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters and state Rep. Fiona McFarland.
The split presented the GOP with competing visions for the post-Ziegler era: Brandt, the local Republican establishment’s choice, or DeWitt, the candidate most directly tied to the parental rights movement that helped propel the conservative takeover four years ago.
Voters sent Brandt forward. DeWitt finished third.
New era for Sarasota County Schools
The Moms for Liberty movement reshaped the Board quickly after the 2022 election.
Soon after the group’s preferred members took office, the Board moved to part ways with Superintendent Brennan Asplen, one of the first major demonstrations of its new political direction.
Over the next several years, Sarasota’s School Board became a recurring venue for battles over parental rights, books, LGBTQ issues and the broader conservative education agenda taking hold in Florida.
In late 2023, a scandal involving Ziegler’s husband, then-Republican Party of Florida Chair Christian Ziegler, brought intense scrutiny to the couple and prompted calls for Bridget Ziegler to resign. Edwards called for her departure. Rose, despite serving alongside Ziegler in the conservative majority, eventually did the same. Ziegler refused.
Then voters began cutting into the majority itself.
In 2024, Edwards won another term despite DeSantis publicly targeting him for defeat. Barker, meanwhile, defeated Rose, reducing a conservative bloc that had started the term with four of the Board’s five seats.
That loss was only temporary for Rose. Enos resigned from the Board in 2025 to return to the School District as its Police Chief, and DeSantis appointed Rose to fill his seat — putting her back on the Board months after voters had removed her.
By November, Rose nominated Ziegler to again serve as Board Chair, with Marinelli as Vice Chair. Barker and Edwards remained the minority.
That changes after Tuesday. Tennimon, a Sarasota native and former elementary school teacher, has three children in District schools and has been active as a classroom volunteer and PTO leader. She campaigned on academics, teacher support, transparency and restoring public trust in the District.
Mayberry retired in 2025 after more than 13 years teaching math and science in Sarasota schools and previously worked as a Certified Financial Planner. She campaigned heavily on school finances, teacher support and shifting the Board’s focus away from political fights.
Both campaigned on returning the Board’s focus to the day-to-day work of running the School District.
The unfinished District 1 race still offers voters a choice in November, but the conservative coalition on the Board is no more.
Glover, a longtime United Airlines employee and Board President at Star Lab in Newtown, has emphasized student achievement, mentorship and college and career readiness throughout his campaign. He has also argued the Board needs to move beyond the culture-war conflicts that have consumed it for years.
Meanwhile, Brandt carries the local Republican Party’s endorsement and has deep ties to Sarasota Republican politics. But she has also put distance between herself and some of the outgoing conservative majority’s most politically charged decisions.
During the campaign, Brandt said she would have opposed a Board resolution reaffirming cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as a separate measure involving student walkouts. She argued the immigration resolution was unnecessary and created fear.
Will she be able to overcome a 12-point Primary deficit and prevent conservatives from being shut out from the School Board? Voters will decide that in November.
Jesse Mendoza is a Tampa Bay reporter for FloridaPolitics.com, focusing on the intersection of government, community, and the ground-level effects of the state’s political scene. He has extensively covered government accountability, environmental issues, hurricane response, and complex federal and state legislation. You can reach Jesse Mendoza at [email protected] and on Twitter/X @Reportographer.
August 19, 2026 at 4:08 pm
It may take us a while but we’ll dismantle everything DeSantis has done.
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