Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is daring Disney to escalate as the politically confident Republican brawls with his state’s most recognizable corporate citizen over a new law regulating discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools.
After Disney pledged support to repeal the Parental Rights in Education law, DeSantis expressed interest in undoing a unique statute that grants the entertainment giant governing authority over its central Florida theme parks. That the governor signed H.B. 1557, denounced by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, was not surprising. But DeSantis’s enthusiasm for conflict, with a company that employs nearly 60,000 Floridians and draws 20 million-plus visitors to the state annually, is unusual.
Governors tend to prefer de-escalation with corporations whose activities are vital to their states’ economies, even if compromising or backing down are nonstarters. DeSantis has taken the opposite approach with Disney — in an election year, no less. The episode reveals the governor’s comfort with cultural combat, keen eye for concerns driving the Republican base, and confidence in his political standing as he vies for a second term and mulls a 2024 presidential bid.
“This plays right into DeSantis’s narrative,” said a Republican insider in Florida who is not aligned with the governor and requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Once he gets a target like this, he doesn’t let up.”
DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw said cultivating a “narrative” had nothing to do with the governor’s decision to sign H.B. 1557, a bill that was not part of DeSantis’s legislative agenda but rather bubbled up from the Republican-controlled Legislature. And if any party in the debate over the law is responsible for waging a culture war, it’s the Burbank, California-based Walt Disney Company — not DeSantis, Pushaw added.
“The governor does not need to look at polling, in order to know that instruction on sexuality and gender ideology in kindergarten classrooms is wrong,” Pushaw told the Washington Examiner. “Disney should refocus on its business and stop trying to wage culture wars against Floridians. The same goes for other woke corporations.”
FEMALE GOP SENATE HOPEFULS SAY TRANSGENDER COLLEGE SWIMMER SIGN OF POLICY RUN AMOK
The Parental Rights in Education law is a seven-page bill hailed by proponents for providing parents more control over their children’s public school education. Polling shows the statute is popular with voters, at least conceptually. But there is controversy surrounding the provision of H.B. 1557 that prohibits “school personnel” from discussing with kindergarten through third-grade students “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” Critics say the law is a bigoted attack on the LGBT community.
Opponents, referring to the law as “Don’t Say Gay,” argue the statute discriminates against students and teachers who are gay or transgender, as well as heterosexual male and female students being raised by two lesbian mothers or two gay fathers. Some Florida Republicans are quietly questioning DeSantis’s embrace of a fight with Disney seven months before Election Day, emphasizing the solid support for gay rights in Florida and the state’s political competitiveness.
“There’s more to Florida than the base,” a GOP operative in the state said. “You can’t win an election with the traditional Republican white men/white women demographic.”
With the first midterm election under President Joe Biden shaping up to be a romp for Republicans, and with DeSantis appearing well-positioned for reelection, Democrats are treating passage of the Parental Rights in Education law as a much-needed political opening to weaken the governor.
“Instead of bringing people together and fixing problems, Ron DeSantis is bitterly dividing Floridians because he thinks it benefits his own personal politics,” said Democratic Governors Association spokesman Sam Newton in a statement. “This vague and wide-ranging bill is a cynical attempt to disrupt classrooms by censoring schools and silencing students.”
DeSantis, 43, has emerged as a leading Republican to succeed Donald Trump atop the GOP should the former president opt against mounting a White House bid in 2024.
The first-term governor and former congressman has impressed grassroots Republicans by sparring with the media and waging aggressive battles to promote the conservative position on key cultural issues, from “voting integrity” to relaxing coronavirus restrictions, social media censorship, illegal immigration, curtailing abortion rights, and now increasing parental influence over public school curriculum. DeSantis’s feud with Disney, hardly his first with a major corporation, is consistent with his penchant for political warfare.
However, the governor did not initiate this fight.
Disney, or at least some Disney executives and employees, took issue with the Parental Rights in Education Law and appealed to DeSantis to veto it. After he refused and H.B. 1557 was enacted, Disney issued a statement declaring it corporate policy that the law be repealed or struck down in court. Amid this declaration, DeSantis said he would consider abolishing the Reedy Creek Improvement District if the Legislature sends him a bill.
The Reedy Creek Improvement District was created by Florida lawmakers in 1967, specifically for Disney, when the company expanded east from California to build more theme parks. The law gives Disney near-complete local control over the land its theme parks sit on in Central Florida as if the corporation were its own county government for the purposes of zoning as it relates to building and expansion and other local matters.
Elimination of this special district could cost Disney billions of dollars in the coming years.
“They can do their own nuclear power plant. Is there any other private company in the state that can just build a nuclear power plant on their own?” DeSantis told reporters last week. “So, I think [the Legislature is] right to be looking at this and reevaluating it. And having an even playing field for everybody, I think, is much better than to basically allow one company to be a law unto itself.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DeSantis appears focused on winning reelection in Florida this November. But party insiders who know him say a White House bid is in the offing. Indeed, in a recent interview, GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who has advised both Trump and DeSantis at different times, said Florida’s governor was among the prominent and formidable Republicans more likely to run for president if Trump enters the 2024 primary.
“I believe, that of all of them, he’s the one most likely to run against Trump regardless of whether Trump runs or not,” Fabrizio told David Axelrod, a Democratic operative who hosts the Axe Files podcast and director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.
