She had appeared to be the front-runner from the outset. In a race that pitted the conservative chairwoman of the School Board against a political newcomer and grassroots Democratic candidate, Ziegler narrowly won. The incumbent with the highest margin of victory was Goodwin, who received more than 53 percent of the vote despite facing three opponents. Brown and Ziegler each received less than 51 percent of the vote. Yet the thin margin in two of the races, between challenger Nick Guy and Ziegler and Brown and her challenger, Karen Rose, showed that voters were not overwhelmingly in favor of the incumbents.
Their divergent views on issues such as the establishment of an internal police force for security, the state's handling of charter schools and school vouchers, Superintendent Todd Bowden's performance and the timing of the vote for extending a one-mill, local-option property tax have come to define contentious board meetings. Those factions, which have broken into School Board members Bridget Ziegler and Eric Robinson on one side and Shirley Brown, Caroline Zucker and Jane Goodwin on the other, remained unchanged by voters. The re-election of the three incumbents will likely have little impact on the board’s 3-2 dynamic between its more conservative and moderate members. Sarasota County voters renewed their faith in the Sarasota County School Board’s establishment Tuesday evening, narrowly re-electing all three incumbents despite the school district's sometimes-contentious climate. Correction: An earlier version of this story did not attribute campaign contributions to both Eric and Christine Robinson.
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