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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refuses to back down in his ongoing feud with Disney. The entertainment giant is suing DeSantis and his handpicked board overseeing Disney World in Orlando, claiming the state takeover of its theme park district was retaliation for criticizing the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. Republicans like Donald Trump and Chris Christie sided with the corporate giant, but polls show Republican voters support DeSantis going to war with one of the Sunshine State’s biggest employers.
Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid says DeSantis has dug himself a deep hole due to his fragile ego and predicts he will lose the battle with Disney.
What DeSantis is doing is he’s trying to take away Disney’s status as a special district. This is basically when a company makes a deal with the state under which they can form a board that effectively controls the area surrounding their business, managing and importantly, paying for things like water, fire, building codes, and so forth. Now DeSantis tried to punish Disney by taking away this status, even going so far as to float ideas like, “Let’s put a maximum security prison right there next to Splash Mountain.” But then he realized that if he were to take away this special district status, he would have to pay for the things Disney’s current board was handling.
So he decided instead to replace the board with a new board. But before this new board took effect, the old board put in place all these regulations saying that the new board couldn’t do anything without Disney’s approval, which is objectively awesome. The new board obviously wanted to get rid of these regulations so as to regain power. And that’s when Disney said, “Nope, get off my porch.” And they sued.
DeSantis is trying to frame this as a, you know, “Disney has to play by the same rules as the rest of us” thing, which I guess means publicly rejecting all those terrible, horrible people who still say the word “gay.” But here’s the thing. Special districts aren’t especially uncommon in Florida. In fact, The Villages, you know that uber-Republican retirement community, is one of them, as is the Daytona Speedway, another conservative-leaning business. Shall DeSantis be going after these special districts? I doubt it.
