CNN
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“DeSantisland” probably wasn’t the happiest place on Earth Thursday.
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepares for a long-awaited jump into the 2024 presidential race next week, his powerful adversary, Disney, stomped on his pre-launch hype by scrapping a billion-dollar plan dollars for an office campus that could have brought 2,000 jobs to the city. been
The move was the latest twist in a bitter feud between DeSantis and one of the biggest corporations operating in the Sunshine State, rooted in a political clash over the Republican governor’s hardline conservative ideology. will make it his argument before the voters of the Republican primaries. And it raises the question of whether Floridians are paying a heavy price for their political ambitions.
Disney’s power play proved CEO Bob Iger wasn’t bluffing when he asked if Florida wanted the company to “invest more, hire more people and pay more taxes” last week. The timing of Thursday’s announcement seemed calculated to damage the governor ahead of the most important week of his political career so far, when he is expected to gently launch his bid for the White House and make the biggest sell on the parcels fundraising. Disney did not specifically blame DeSantis for the move, citing in part “changing business conditions.” But the message was clear.
“When you’re involved in a situation like this, it’s not very often that events like this are random or coincidental,” said Mark Johnston, professor of marketing and ethics at the Crummer School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park. , Florida.
Disney’s latest jab at DeSantis caused multiple political reverberations. It provided a great opportunity for former President Donald Trump and other candidates in the Republican primary to argue that DeSantis is wrong through an ill-conceived battle with the corporate giant and to accuse him of wasting jobs and business in search of a higher position.
The Trump campaign gleefully declared that DeSantis was “caught in the mousetrap,” after predicting weeks ago that the governor would lose face with Mickey Mouse. (In that same statement, the campaign claimed the GOP front-runner, while in office, was known as the “job president.”)
The fact that some of the new Disney project jobs were expected to be transferred from California also undercuts a central narrative in the DeSantis platform that businesses and citizens are fleeing liberal areas for a dynamic state called “DeSantisland” by his supporters and that he he. calls “the free state of Florida.”
More fundamentally, the latest sign that Disney outbid DeSantis threatens to highlight the damaging perceptions that Trump and other critics are trying to sow about his candidacy: that despite his landslide re-election victory in November, DeSantis lacks basic political skills and intelligence · strategic intelligence. That issue has gained momentum after a series of missteps by DeSantis, who for months was seen as a serious threat to Trump as he prepared his campaign. His clash with Disney also calls into question whether the bully persona the governor adopted to appeal to the conservative base is grounded in reality.
In other words, has DeSantis chosen an enemy who, after decades of dominating the mainstream and protecting his image in court, is tougher and better at politics than he is? If so, what does that bode well for his ability to thrive in an upcoming showdown with a candidate as wild as Trump?
In a series of moves over the past year, DeSantis created the “mousetrap” for himself. He recently criticized Disney during a visit to South Carolina, a key swing state, declaring, “They may have run Florida for 50 years before I came on the scene, but they don’t run Florida anymore.”
The dispute between the governor and Disney dates back to the company’s objections to legislation DeSantis signed last spring that restricted the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade degree, dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” The move is part of its targeting of cultural issues and its campaign against “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The strategy is designed to appeal to conservatives who believe that traditional American values are under attack from a more diverse and inclusive society. But the governor’s clash with Disney, a large company that appeals to millions of Americans and has tried to be more inclusive in recent years, could hint at the difficulty DeSantis might have in selling those policies to more moderate voters in an election generals
DeSantis claimed in his recently published autobiography that Disney had been pressured by “left-wing activists” to take a position that alienated Floridians, including parents and children, and had nothing to do with its core business. He justified his subsequent effort to seize control of a special taxing district that gave Disney broad autonomy by saying he had stopped acting in Florida’s best interest. “The Walt Disney Company had decided to bite the hand that had fed it for over fifty years,” he wrote.
Disney, in response to the governor’s moves, has accused DeSantis of violating his right to free speech and launched a lawsuit that could cast a shadow over his presidential campaign.
In keeping with his forceful political persona, DeSantis reacted defiantly to Disney’s announcement that it would halt the office project. Jeremy T. Redfern, a spokesman for his office, said: “Disney announced the possibility of a campus at Lake Nona almost two years ago. Nothing came of the project, and the state wasn’t sure if it would come to fruition.” Redfern also took a look at the entertainment empire: “Given the company’s financial difficulties, the falling market capitalization and declining share prices, it is not surprising that they restructured their business operations and liquidated unsuccessful companies.”
Whatever the economic context of this dispute, it has huge political implications, as can be seen from the swift reactions of some of his potential GOP primary rivals.
Trump’s camp issued several statements, including one that sang that “President Trump is always right” and went back on his earlier prediction that DeSantis would be “absolutely destroyed by Disney.” The situation is a plus for Trump: It allows him to portray DeSantis as weak and politically naïve, while also taking shots at an impressive economic and political record in Florida that the governor is using as a base for his campaign. Trump has long established himself as a celebrity negotiator, and while that persona may not be vindicated by his years of questionable investments and business failures, he remains powerful among Republican primary voters and could help him furthering their attacks on the DeSantis business. register
“Ron DeSantis’ failed war on Disney has done little for his limping shadow campaign and is now doing even less for Florida’s economy,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.
Another possible candidate in the GOP primary, former Vice President Mike Pence, also used the Disney announcement to attack DeSantis. She argued that the governor should have simply won over the legislature to teach gender issues in schools.
“I like Walt Disney, he didn’t wake up Disney,” Pence told Fox Business. “I just don’t think it’s in the best interest of the people of any state for a government to essentially go after a business that they disagreed with on a policy issue.”
Democrats also chimed in, foreshadowing general election attacks they could make against DeSantis should he win the Republican nomination.
“Governor DeSantis is more interested in running for president than running the state of Florida” and is trying to “outdo Trump” in the Republican primary, Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “Situation Room”.
“And now the people of Florida are paying the price,” he said.
Given his political exposure at Disney and the combative political image that is central to his White House hopes, DeSantis likely has no choice but to further escalate the confrontation.
“He wants Republicans to know that ‘I’m not going to give in just because someone asked, because the winds changed,'” said Scott Jennings, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House and a CNN political commentator.
So the feud with Disney is unlikely to end while DeSantis is running for president, though it may ultimately end up hurting both the well-known entertainment giant and the state that hosts Disney World, which he calls at home.
“I think there’s a growing sense that: How does this end in a positive way?” said Johnston, the Rollins College professor. “It’s not that Disney has to lose and the state has to win or vice versa. It’s how we do it so that both sides can walk away from this and we can have a great relationship between Disney and the state of Florida again.” .
