Before we get to today’s The Horror That is Florida’s Politics, let me recap how we got here. Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Don’t Say Gay bill into law. The bill was a direct attack on the LGBTQ community and targeted school aged children. Disney CEO at the time, Bob Chapek gave an insufficient response to the bill, so Disney companies like Pixar called out Poppa Mouse for exploiting the LGBTQ community for dollars but never actually supporting them. Disney heard the message and began to step up. We can debate whether they did enough another time because DeSantis is the subject of my ire today.
Disney holds special governing rights in their little magical section of Florida. When they took a stance against Don’t Say Gay, DeSantis asked lawmakers to take those rights away. The issue was, it really messed with tax codes in the area and violated some existing laws so everyone ignored DeSantis directive. Last Monday, DeSantis signed another law, but this one came specifically for Disney. It reverts the power of the governing body of the Disney district back to the state and guess who is selecting the board to run it? That’s right, everyone DeSantis either owes a favor to or wants to win over.
Appearing at the doorstep of Walt Disney World, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday that gives him new power over Disney, effectively punishing the entertainment giant for speaking out against the Republican’s political agenda.
The new law amounts to a state takeover of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century. It allows the governor to replace the district’s existing board – mostly people with ties to Disney – with a five-member body that he hand-picks.
“Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said Monday at a Reedy Creek fire station in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. “There’s a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.”
DeSantis announced his appointments to the reconstructed board, including Martin Garcia, a Tampa lawyer and prolific Republican donor whose private investment firm contributed $50,000 to DeSantis’ reelection, and Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County School Board member who was a co-founder of the conservative organization Moms for Liberty and the wife of Christian Ziegler, the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.
The move against Disney comes nearly a year after the company spoke out against a Florida bill – which DeSantis later signed into law – to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts and saying the company was “dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ community in Florida and across the country.”
DeSantis responded by calling on lawmakers to strip Disney of its special governing power, which they did last year, ending a longstanding arrangement that allowed the company to build its sprawling, iconic Orlando-area theme parks into an international tourist destination and one of the state’s most critical economic engines.
Lawmakers, though, changed course amid concerns a disruption of Reedy Creek’s debt and contracts violated the state law that created the special tax district. Instead, DeSantis appointees will be in charge of the district’s long-standing powers to tax, build and borrow money for projects and services around Disney’s vast footprint in Orange and Osceola counties. It also renames Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, restricts its use of eminent domain and removes never-used powers that could have allowed Disney to build its own airport or a nuclear plant.
“Disney came out against something that was really just about protecting young kids, and making sure that students are able to go to school learning to read, write, add, subtract, and not having a teacher tell them that they can change their gender,” DeSantis said Monday. “And I think most parents agree with that. But you know, that was only a mild annoyance. I think that what we came to realize after that dust settled on that was you clearly had a movement within the corporation itself.”
Okay, I’m not sure Disney should’ve ever had the right to build their own nuclear plant. Although, I would kind of like to see what that would look like: Welcome to Mr. Toad’s Wild Reactor! I won’t pretend to know how Florida politics work. DeSantis doesn’t pretend to, why should I? But this is a ballsy chess game he’s playing. Initially, I laughed DeSantis off because Disney can make life very difficult for those who want to cross them. But they aren’t going to dig up their Orlando Parks and replant them. I don’t, in fact, know how much sway that horrible, hateful man has over the district. This reads like a flex. DeSantis wanted to be able to print that he punished Disney for defying him, look how tough he is, nobody pushes little Ronnie around. We’ll know soon enough. It’s Disney’s move. Bob Iger’s back in the CEO chair. They’ll strike when their irons are hot.
I am, however, choked by the audacity of DeSantis in this statement, “Disney came out against something that was really just about protecting young kids, and making sure that students are able to go to school learning to read, write, add, subtract, and not having a teacher tell them that they can change their gender.” I know there are good people in Florida, so I would never wish something to happen to the state. Let me just say, though, how much I wish Disney security would remove DeSantis from the park.
Photo credit: Instagram and Getty Images
