Heidi Brandt talks charter schools, Pleasure Texting LLC, and more on The Detail

The conservative school board candidate sat for a one-hour interview with host Cathy Antunes.

By Johannes Werner

Original Air Date: October 29, 2026

Host: Heidi Brandt is in a runoff with Jimmy Glover for the Sarasota School Board seat held for years by Moms for Liberty activist Bridget Ziegler. Endorsed by the Sarasota Republican Party, after a sweep by non-conservative candidates in the primary elections, Brandt has advertised herself as the remaining “one conservative voice” on the school board. Less than a week before election day, Heidi Brandt sat for a one-hour interview today with Cathy Antunes, host of The Detail on WSLR 96.5 FM. Here are a few highlights from that interview.

Johannes Werner: Heidi Brandt said her now nine-year-old daughter was her main motivation to run for school board. She talked about her daughter’s public school and how she has been deeply involved and engaged as a parent.

Brandt projected a calmer, less drama-producing school board, should she get elected.

Heidi Brandt | Photo courtesy Brandt for School Board

Heidi Brandt: What we need to do is get back to the truth and sanity. Our school board meetings are about our education and about our students and about our teachers, not about our politics.

JW: She advocated for parental choice for masks and vaccination.

Asked about public funding for for-profit charter schools, and whether she would go against Republican state leadership promoting corporate schools, she suggested she would advocate for more oversight by local school districts over charter schools.

HB: I don’t think, personally, that there should be a difference between the two. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that we are providing education for every child, whether in a public school or a charter school. I think there is something missing there between keeping those charter schools accountable.

I am not for for-profit charter schools at all, period. I am not for that. I believe that some charter schools, possibly, to get going—get their management system in order—get their tech in order—might need to hire an outside company to come do that. That’s their dollars, their choice. But that’s not necessarily a profit charter school.

JW: She also said she thinks it would be unlikely that the state would impose corporate schools that overcharge and underperform on local districts.

HB: That would be a really hard fight in Tallahassee against a school board that says, “Listen, our students deserve better. This charter is not performing for our students.”

JW: Cathy Antunes also asked her about conservatives criticizing her for having been a managing member of Pleasure Texting LLC. The company’s advertising included bondage imagery, including women wearing dog collars. Brandt said it was inspired by 50 Shades of Grey, the popular novel and film with a bondage theme.

HB: One of my friends who is a graphic designer said, “We could make a great app with which husbands and wives could text back and forth with each other—boyfriends and girlfriends—and kind-of along the lines of the 50 Shades of Grey book. She came up with the graphics. I happened to know a patent attorney because in Jerry’s law firm that he worked with there was a patent attorney, so I signed off and funded it a little bit. I signed off as managing director just for the purposes of getting the patent put through because it was our attorney, and that was the extent of my role in it. They were selling it for a while on the app store for Androids, but a year later, we moved to Florida, and I stepped away from the company.

JW: Pressed about whether this is an image of women that is healthy in an era of Epstein files, Brandt said this:

HB: I do know that, when she was creating images, it was based on the idea of the book and the idea of the bondage and how the character was giving herself to her partner in that playful role. I don’t believe it had any connotations to sex trafficking or demeaning women because, when you read that book and when you watch that movie, that wasn’t who that woman was in that role at all. It was consensual, playful giving of herself to her partner in that role.

JW: To listen to the full one-hour interview, go to archive.wslr.org and look for the October 29 episode of The Detail with Cathy Antunes.

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