Exclusive — Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler: We’re Getting Involved in Local Races

The Republican Party of Florida is going to continue to build on its efforts to solidify Florida as a red state, in part by getting involved in local races, Florida GOP chairman Christian Ziegler told Breitbart News Saturday.

“We’re gonna continue to do everything we’ve done in the past right. Voter registration in the off year. We’re going to do our get out the vote operation as we get closer, which no one in the country does better than Florida, in our state party,” Ziegler said, explaining that they will continue those efforts. However, it will not end there, as the party is also going to focus on local races in addition to state-level and federal-level elections.

“We’re going to expand and we’re going to go after these local races,” he said, naming the school board level, the county commission and city commission levels as examples.

Ziegler said DeSantis initially told him that he wanted to meet with him in Tallahassee to discuss school board races, specifically, and the meeting involved education policy teams, high-powered consultants, and Moms for Liberty.

“He put out a list of 14 school board members that need to be removed, that need to be defeated this cycle that are up for election. And these are people that voted for mass shutdowns, you know, some of the indoctrination, and we now have our lists,” he said, identifying that as the “first round.”

“This is why it’s so important that it’s across this country,” Ziegler added, noting that this issue — indoctrination in the educational system —  has motivated people who otherwise would not be involved in politics to act.

“They’re seeing what their kids are being taught– some of the sexual content being pushed on them. …  They’re pissed and these parents are getting involved. They may even be registered Democrats, but they are turning out and voting Republican and [it] happened last cycle. We’re gonna make sure it happens even more this cycle by going after those levels and making sure we elect conservatives, but we also mobilize everyone that are passionate about those issues. That’s how you become a strong red state. And that’s exactly what we’re gonna do here in Florida,” he added.

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Ziegler also highlighted the trend of people flocking to the Sunshine State since DeSantis took office in 2018.

“Look, he won by 30,000 votes [in 2018]. Only 30,000 out of millions of votes cast and since he took office, there’s been a million net new people that have moved here and registered to vote. Out of that million about 500,000 … have registered as Republican. Only 17,000 have registered as Democrat which is, like, insane. So we’re seeing independents surging in our state because they’re leaving the Democrat Party [and] becoming Republicans or independents,” he said, noting that the net increase for Republicans is great but adding that the math shows that the governor and his policies are winning over non-Republicans as well.

“That net increase of about 500,000 for Republicans, you know, that’s great, but Governor DeSantis actually won by 1.5 million votes. So if you take that 500, there’s still a million votes there that are unaccounted for, that you can’t attribute to just Republicans moving to the state of Florida. A lot of them are obviously the independents that moved here, but a huge portion of them are newly activated voters that are activated on these cultural issues, that are activated because their children have been indoctrinated or indoctrination been pushed on their kids,” he explained, also pointing to the sexual content pushed on children and gender ideology as drivers of the mass mobilization.

“So all these issues have mobilized,” the Florida GOP chairman continued, noting that many voters in 2022 showed up and expressed that they were driven by these local issues.

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