(soft music) - [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(soft music) - [Eric] Coming up next, more calls for a Republican powerhouse couple to step down in the wake of a sex scandal.

An "Orlando Sentinel" investigative report says the charges that led to the removal of the Orange-Osceola County state attorney were overstated.

The Rays say they will not rename the baseball team.

And Florida's attorney general wants an investigation into why undefeated FSU was denied a spot in the college football championship playoffs.

(upbeat stately music) Welcome back.

I'm Eric Deggans, TV critic and media analyst for National Public Radio, a former reporter for the "Tampa Bay Times", and a resident of St. Petersburg, filling in for Rob Lorei.

Joining us on our giant-sized panel this week, Colleen Wright is the St. Petersburg reporter for the "Tampa Bay Times".

Aakash Patel is the founder and CEO of Elevate, Inc. and is a Republican.

Scott Maxwell is a columnist for the "Orlando Sentinel".

Sheryl Wilson is the past president of the Manatee County Democratic Party.

And Jacob Ogles is a reporter for FloridaPolitics.com.

Thanks for joining us, everybody.

First up, Sarasota area Congressman Vern Buchanan is calling on the head of the Florida Republican Party, Christian Ziegler, to step down.

Buchanan joins other top Florida Republicans who say that Ziegler should resign.

Governor Ron DeSantis, U.S.

Senator Rick Scott, and Attorney General Ashley Moody have all called on Ziegler to give up the chairmanship.

Ziegler's being investigated for the alleged sexual assault of an unidentified woman with whom he and his wife previously had a consensual three-way sex encounter.

The woman alleges she was raped by Ziegler in a separate incident in October.

Ziegler has denied that anything illegal took place.

The Sarasota Police Department is investigating.

Also this week, the Sarasota School Board passed a non-binding resolution calling for Ziegler's wife, Bridget, to step down from her post on the Sarasota School Board.

Ziegler says she will remain in the position.

Bridget Ziegler is co-founder of Moms for Liberty.

Activist groups have called Bridget Ziegler's involvement in the three-way sexual relationship hypocritical because she's been a vocal advocate for legislation such as the Parental Rights in Education Act, also known as the Don't Say Gay law.

On Thursday, the website Florida Politics reported that Christian Ziegler wants a multi-million dollar buyout to resign as the Republican Party of Florida's chair.

One source said Ziegler wanted $2 million to go away.

However, the "Sarasota Herald-Tribune" reports that Ziegler is denying the report.

Jacob Ogles of Florida Politics, who reported the alleged buyout request, joins us now.

Jacob, I want to ask you, as we said earlier, Ziegler has denied seeking this payout.

What are your sources telling you, and are you confident in what you've been reporting?

- I am very confident in what I've been reporting.

I will say Ziegler has also told me that it was a lie that he was seeking a multimillion dollar payout.

I will note the "Herald-Tribune" article that mentioned him denying this also did have its own sourcing, saying that he'd asked for substantial amounts of money, between his salary and between the $2 million amounts that we reported.

And NBC News has also backed up our reporting with multiple sources saying he was seeking millions, not thousands of dollars.

So, I'm very confident in our report.

I know that a number of people I've talked to say that Ziegler, through his emissaries, have raised the subject of him having a buyout in order for him to step away from the party.

I know that he is expected to resist any calls to remove him.

- So Ziegler now seems to be saying that he has no plans to resign.

We know that there's gonna be a meeting on Sunday where this is discussed.

Can you talk a little bit, Jacob, what are your sources telling you about what might happen and what his chances are of sticking around?

- Well, for very long, I don't think his chances are good at all.

I'll tell you the big question right now is the timeline.

Right now, there's debate within the executive board for the state party in terms of how quickly they can remove him.

Some think that they can hold a trial as soon as Monday, a tribunal within the state party, and determine findings very quickly and call for a vote to suspend him or expel him from the party.

There are some people though that think that's running awry of the state constitution for the party and saying this could take another 20 days.

Regardless, I think that his support is very low.

33 of the 40 members who sit on the executive board for the county signed a petition in favor of holding this meeting on Sunday.

And it's only going to take, at most, 2/3 vote in order for him to be removed, if not just a majority.

So I don't think his chances of retaining this job are very high.

- So Aakash, I wanted to ask you, if it takes a while for the GOP to remove him, how damaging is that for the party and the state?

- Well, you have session coming up, right, in January.

So I think it's pretty distracting, and a lot of these elected, the folks that are up for reelection, we gotta focus on 2024 and that's, starting January, it's critical.

So I think it's gonna be a distraction.

I think the best thing for him to do is what every elected official that you report on said, and what Jacob's reported, is to ask him to step down politely.

This tribunal is gonna just, more infighting, it's gonna cause distraction.

- And we're in a situation where there's been allegations made, but he hasn't even been charged with a crime.

How fair is it to have so many elected officials in Florida lining up asking him to leave, when he hasn't even been charged with a crime yet?

- Well, when he took the post as chair, it's about integrity.

And I think a lot, whatever happens, whether the outcome of the investigation, the integrity of his character has been attacked.

And I think that's where you just, you have to step aside for the right of leadership.

- Okay, Sheryl, I wanted to ask you, in addition to what Christian Ziegler's facing, his wife, Bridget Ziegler, faced a vote where four of her compadres on the Sarasota School Board asked her to step down.

She said that she's not gonna step down.

What do you make of what's happening here?

It seems to be a reflection of a strategy we've seen from other Republican officials where they just don't back down, even though there's a lot of criticism.

- I think Bridget Ziegler has been known to have used those very words in a lot of arguments and positions that she's taken.

"I won't back down" seems to be a slogan and a way of doing business for her.

This one is a bit different, I think, than a criminal charge filed against someone or even a political position that Christian has.

She is in an elected position, and she has an obligation not only to the people of Sarasota County, but specifically to the students and the teachers and the staff in the Sarasota County school systems.

And all you have to look at is the stories and the attention and the distraction that she has been to find that she has, previously of course, was a distraction as well, but she's certainly a distraction now when her hypocrisy and contradictions have come to light.

- Jacob, I wanted to come back to you.

Florida Politics broke this story about the allegations of seeking payment, and also I think you guys broke the story about the original allegations of sexual assault against Ziegler, is that true?

- Well, I want to give credit to the Center for Government Accountability and the team over there.

We were the first mainstream outlet to report on these allegations, yes; but they obtained the documents first and they had the first reporting out there on the criminal investigation.

They have a legal arm that has done a very good job of getting a lot of this information out in the public from police reports and investigations.

- So I wanted to ask you, what does it say about the media environment in the state that we have these watchdog groups unearthing stories that our mainstream news outlets are not necessarily finding?

- Well, it is an interesting change in relationship.

At one point, those organizations were primarily partnering with media, or media was hiring its own lawyers.

I think that there has certainly been a change in the landscape across the state in terms of how often newspapers and TV stations are gonna lawyer up themselves in terms of going and getting this information.

Many of the people at the Center for Government Accountability used to work for the First Amendment Foundation, which used to work in concert with newspapers to get a lot of information made public in the past.

So that's an interesting shift in the landscape.

- All right.

Well, I feel like we could talk about this for the whole show, but I think we're gonna have to move on to our next story.

Earlier this year, Governor Ron DeSantis removed the Orange-Osceola State Attorney, Monique Worrell, from office, quote, "for refusing to faithfully enforce the laws of Florida."

At issue were 74 drug trafficking arrests made by the local sheriff last year.

According to the sheriff, State Attorney Worrell failed to prosecute any of the cases.

But the "Orlando Sentinel" investigated the allegation of failure to prosecute and found in many of the cases, it was not true.

Several cases resulted in convictions, and nearly half were still working their way through the legal system.

In other cases, the state crime lab found no evidence of illegal narcotics in the samples they were given.

Judges also rejected some cases because of illegal searches, and the "Sentinel" found that not a single one of the abandoned cases had been successfully revived by the new prosecutor who DeSantis chose to replace Worrell.

So Scott, I want to come to you first on this, because you wrote a column about this in the "Orlando Sentinel".

Did the original reasons for removing Worrell, did they really hold up?

- At least this one doesn't, and I think there are two things at play here.

One is the discussion about this actual removal.

And by the way, I think this is one of the bigger stories in Florida.

I think if most people heard about Third World dictators removing elected officials from their local offices, they would sort of shake their heads; but it's getting to be standard here.

But what we're seeing with DeSantis is this trend to sort of make these big, splashy, broad announcements, and not really have the facts back it up.

As you just mentioned, in this case, she did successfully prosecute some of them.

Nearly half these cases are still active; they're still working their way through the system.

And when you mentioned just a moment ago that like the crime lab didn't find drugs and so they said there was nothing they could prosecute, that's DeSantis's crime lab, that's the state crime lab.

So it seemed like this pretty big picture of accusations that we've kind of seen before, where the governor has talked about things like child abuse when it comes to face-masking with school officials in Brevard County, where cops later came in and said, "No, no, no, there was no abuse whatsoever."

So he sort of scores the big headlines, but the claims always don't always stand up.

The problem for Monique Worrell is that in this case, the people ultimately vetting his decision here will be a lot of the people who are his political buddies and people he appointed to the Supreme Court.

- So Scott, I'm wondering like, how does this affect law enforcement in the state?

If you have a situation where the governor can make these kind of allegations against someone that don't seem to necessarily be what they are once you look at them closely?

- Well, I think what you are asking, Eric, is a logical, principled question, and we just haven't seen a whole lot of that.

What we see is teamsmanship and partisanship right now.

I think a lot of people, if you talk to them privately, if they're a Republican prosecutor, they would say, "Oh my gosh, I think it's a terrible idea to have a governor be able to remove me from office when I answer only to the electorate."

However, virtually none of them have been willing to say so in public because it's all sort of, like I said, partisan.

So I think there are some serious principles at play, that by the way, we've never seen in Florida history before.

Usually it's been governors removing for actual crimes, and there's nothing like that going on.

So I think there are big issues, but we haven't seen many people trouble themselves with those concerns.

- So Aakash, as the Republican on the panel, (laughs) I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit.

- That's fine.

- What do you make of this?

I mean, is it fair to remove a prosecutor for not handling cases, when one of her most prominent critics seems to have made allegations that turned out to not be the whole truth?

- Well, I'm gonna go back to where I live.

Hillsborough County, the same situation happened when Governor DeSantis removed State Attorney Andrew Warren I don't know, three, four years ago, almost two years ago now.

And the same thing was said when State Attorney Suzy Lopez came in.

However, we're safer here in Hillsborough County because of State Attorney Suzy Lopez.

I think the initial reaction or whoever advised the governor and the governor has exercised his power to remove folks from office that he doesn't feel are keeping their area of jurisdiction safe.

And the state attorney, who I don't know, I don't live in that county, from what was told, wasn't keeping the area safe, and safety is a concern and that's the governor's right.

So I don't think he's out of his jurisdiction, and if he was, we would hear about it.

- Okay, Sheryl, you're the Democrat.

(group laughs) What do you make of that?

Is it okay to remove an elected official when there's just allegations that they might not be doing their job?

- And we could go back to the discussion we were having earlier about the Zieglers in Sarasota County.

You know, the governor is the one guy who could remove Bridget Ziegler from the school board in Sarasota County.

And he has suggested that it would be appropriate for her to leave that job, but yet, he isn't taking that step.

And you have to wonder, is it maybe that there's a political ally situation there.

- But the difference is, is she doing her job?

Is she going to the board meetings?

Is she serving her constituency?

In this situation with the state attorney, there's an accusation and a record of her not doing, or trying the most cases she should.

- What we're seeing though in the case that I'm referencing, is someone who is a distraction to doing her job.

The other point I would like to make is, you know, there are things that the voters of Florida have approved and have voted for in amendments that the governor and the legislature are just simply ignoring.

So if we can remove one officer for not doing the job, perhaps we could have an entire slate who aren't doing the job.

You know, we have returning citizens voting rights, we have wetlands protection that the voters in Florida said, "Yes, we want that."

The governor is ignoring those.

- So Scott, I want to come back to you real quick.

Where does the case stand right now?

Is it possible that this prosecutor who was removed might be able to get their position back?

- It is possible, but it seems unlikely.

I watched the oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court justices did not try to sort of hide their disdain for Monique Worrell.

They were pretty clearly on the governor's side.

I was kind of surprised, I thought usually justices, or often try to go, at least go through the motions of acting like they haven't made up their mind.

So it doesn't look like the Supreme Court is going to give him any relief.

And then after that, it goes to the State Senate, which is basically a bunch of puppets for the governor.

So whether she has a legal case is a completely different issue of whether she may get justice in the state, given the folks who are scheduled, slated to decide.

- All right, thank you for that update, Scott.

Let's move on to our third topic.

A proposal to ask the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team to change their name to the St. Petersburg Rays came up at the St. Pete City Council meeting this week.

Backers of the idea, including some current council members and former mayor Rick Baker, say that since St. Petersburg and Pinellas residents are putting up almost half the money to build a proposed new $1.3 billion stadium, the local residents should get something in return.

Colleen Wright covers the city council for the "Times" and is joining us to talk about it.

So Colleen, you've covered this issue.

Where do things stand right now?

- So yesterday was kind of a showdown.

You had former Mayor Rick Baker there, current mayor Ken Welch was also present at the city council meeting, you had the Rays there.

And basically what ended up happening is they ended up softening their ask.

Instead of asking for explicit name change, they asked for ways to elevate the city of St. Petersburg.

Because they feel, it was a consensus yesterday that since, like you said, since so much money is going into it, maybe St. Petersburg should be a little bit elevated.

Some council members expressed that, you know, when they're broadcasting the game, they say that the game is played in Tampa; and it's played in St. Petersburg, different county, different city, and Tampa's not paying for it, St. Petersburg is.

So the ask yesterday was kind of softened and broadened to include just other ways to include St. Petersburg, perhaps maybe the stadium name.

However, the naming rights for the stadium, those belong to the Rays.

So that's kind of a tricky issue.

- So I thought I saw reporting saying, the team officials saying they're not gonna change the name of the team.

Have they given any concrete reasons for why they're so adamant about not changing the name of the team?

- They say that, you know, Rays Co-President Brian Auld was there yesterday and he spoke exactly to that, saying that the name is deliberately inclusive.

It's inclusive of Tampa Bay and it reflects the region.

And you know, there's fans that go, that come from Hillsborough County, Pasco County, Manatee County, they come from all over, and that that better reflects the region.

- All right, so Aakash, you're a Tampa guy, right?

- Yes, sir.

- All right, I live in St. Pete.

We really should be at odds on this one.

(group laughs) Why is there this conflict between Tampa and St. Pete when it comes to issues like this?

Why are we so quick to kind of compete with each other when it comes to naming rights or recognition?

Doesn't it make sense to just say that hey, Tampa's better known, maybe Tampa's name should be in the name of the team?

- Yeah, I think every time we have a Super Bowl, or every time we have a big sporting event, we call it the Tampa Bay region.

Even this week, we have the NCAA volleyball championship.

It's in Tampa Bay, Florida.

I know Tampa Bay, Florida, doesn't exist, but that's what we should be.

And so now that we're moving forward, I don't think we should move backwards and change the city.

And by the way, St. Pete residents are going to benefit and the city of St. Pete is going to benefit from this investment because we're gonna go, I'm gonna drive across the bridge, I'm gonna spend, most people, on the restaurants and all the overnight stays.

So I think it's gonna be beneficial for St. Pete.

So I think hopefully it's gonna be called Tampa Bay, and I agree with the Rays on this one.

- So Sheryl, you may be on the outside looking in on this.

You're not in Tampa or St. Pete.

- But I'm in Tampa Bay.

(laughs) - But you're in Tampa Bay!

(group laughs) So what do you make of this and- - Well, the first thing that I noticed was, think about what we said here.

We talked about discussion, we talked about making a compromise, and we talked about inclusion.

You know, maybe our political scene can learn something from our sports team.

But no, I think we are, the Rays and the other professional sports franchises in the area are very much based and supported throughout the Tampa Bay area.

I see people driving by me in Manatee County from Fort Myers all the time with their Rays gear.

So they're going up to support them, and I'm very much in the corner of keeping it the Tampa Bay Rays.

- So Colleen- - See we can agree, see.

- Yeah!

(group laughs) Can't we all just get along?

No, so Colleen, I want to put you on the spot a little bit.

But we love when we have reporters, asking them, what's gonna happen next?

Where do you see this story going next?

What's your sense about where this might go or whether this controversy will last?

- So this name change, you know, some people have the attitude of "This is silly."

Some people say "No, if we're ponying up, we should have that kind of like name recognition, brand recognition."

The biggest thing in the background here is that it's all about negotiation.

The deal is not done.

You know, there's been a tentative, you know, event and announcement that the Rays will stay, but still the documents haven't been signed.

That will come around springtime of next year if the current, you know, if we stay on track with the current timeline.

Of course, but that could change with negotiations.

You know, not everyone thinks that this is a great deal.

Some saw this as like maybe a negotiation tactic and that maybe something else could come from it.

Some people saw yesterday's vote as a win, saying, you know, "Well, maybe we'll get the stadium name out of it, or some other kind of naming rights."

Another really important part of the ask was that the mayor now has to present a report on some of the conversations that his officials in the city administration have had with the Rays, and that'll shed some light.

So there's also this like theme of transparency in the background.

It's a major deal.

The redevelopment in total is $6.5 billion of investment.

You mentioned the stadium, that's the publicly financed part.

The rest of 65 or so acres will be sold from the city to the Rays at quite a discount.

And that's kind of the big overall piece here is just knowing the numbers, transparency, and making sure that there's the best deal here.

So you're gonna see things like this kind of come up.

- All right, well let's move on to our fourth story.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has launched an antitrust investigation into the College Football Playoffs' exclusion of undefeated Florida State in favor of 12-and-1 Alabama.

The exclusion has fired up Florida football fans who think the decision to exclude FSU was unfair.

Moody is looking into quote, "possible contracts, combinations or conspiracies relating to anti-competitive effects".

The attorney general has sent a demand letter to the College Football Playoff, the organization that administers the playoffs, and ultimately determined that FSU could not compete in it, despite an undefeated regular season.

Moody's office wants all communications with the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeastern Conference, and Sports Media Outlet, ESPN.

So Aakash, you're a proud Seminole.

- Yes, sir.

- Right.

But I just find myself wondering, is there anything the attorney general really can do about this?

Or are we just seeing some politics going on here, trying to get on the good side of FSU fans?

- The attorney general, the governor, the CFO, they've all come out and they're defending Florida, because Florida is losing out, not just Florida State, which is obvious.

We were undefeated, or this team was undefeated, we didn't get chosen and because of some conjecture ESPN or the CFP committee decided, but other students might not go to school here at Miami or Florida or Florida State because they might not get the chance to have this opportunity to play on the national stage.

It's a national spotlight that all the high school kids are watching, and we are losing out, and we earned our right.

We were undefeated, we beat our conference opponents, and I think the attorney general is doing what she can do in saying, "This is unprecedented.

Let me try to see if we can get some attention on this."

- All right, I want to go to Jacob.

I may be asking you something that's a little outside your purview, but I'm wondering if there's an economic impact.

I mean, you talked a little bit about recruiting.

Is there an economic impact to this?

Is there an impact beyond bruised feelings in excluding FSU, that you might be aware of?

- I'm a little skeptical of that, but I do know this is easy politics.

I think politicians from across the political spectrum and across the state have jumped on this issue because there's so much emotion about the playoff ball.

But I think any economic impact, if you could quantify it, it's hard to compare to the $1 million that Governor DeSantis and Ashley Moody are talking about putting behind a legal case here.

That's a whole lot of money that could be used for a lot of things in Florida.

And I wonder how long people are gonna have patience for a seven-figure ask for a sports team question about this.

- Just like a cynical journalist.

(chuckles) We appreciate that.

So before we go, we want to ask, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

So Aakash, what do you think?

What else should we be talking about?

- Well, I chair the Early Learning Coalition in Hillsborough County.

I was appointed by Governor Scott and I am a big believer in early learning.

And this week, the 23 schools in Hillsborough County, there's 234,000 students, 23 schools had D rating and four had F rating.

And we have a great new superintendent in Van Ayres.

But it shows you the importance of how the school board's gonna respond, how the legislature's gonna respond, and how school board elections matter, especially here in Hillsborough County.

And I think our superintendent's got a good plan to focus on early learning, and I'm excited to see what he does.

- All right, Sheryl, what do you think?

- I'm gonna be very partisan here.

Sports and politics, you can't get much better than that on a discussion like this.

But I just want to welcome the new chair of the Manatee County Democratic Party, who was elected earlier this week, or earlier this month.

His name is Chris Wetherington, he works in healthcare.

He knows the topics that we're all concerned about and facing.

And we do have significant activity going in Manatee County and he's coming in at the right time and we wish him well.

- Okay, Colleen, we don't have a lot of time.

Your story of the week.

- Well, you know that I'm gonna be focused on St. Petersburg and the Rays.

So the project is coming before the Community Benefits Agreement.

That's basically to assess that since a lot of taxpayer dollars and land is being sold, we'll see what we can get out of it as a city.

So that's coming up.

- All right, well thank you all for joining us.

Send us your comments at FTW@WEDU.org and like us on Facebook.

You can view this and past shows online at WEDU.org or on the PBS app.

And "Florida This Week" is now available as a podcast.

From all of us at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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