Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Mickey Mouse dilemma goes beyond the debate about the proper use of state power to combat “woke” corporations. DeSantis’ critics on both the right and left missed the main plot: woke companies from Disney to BlackRock won special deals from the governor, in a way that undermines the credibility of his crusade against them.The Walt Disney Company is now suing DeSantis, claiming he orchestrated “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” which it said stemmed from the company’s criticism of the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” by critics. This move follows Disney’s attempt to defenestrate the power of a DeSantis-appointed governing board and DeSantis’ retaliatory suggestions to bring other amusement parks to the state, impose new tax levies and regulations on Disney, and even to locate a state prison near Disney World.
DeSantis’ chief defense is persuasive at face value: companies like Disney shouldn’t have special crony privileges in the first place. Disney has long enjoyed a smorgasbord of special privileges and legal carveouts as a product of its lobbying, even granted self-governing status for the last 50 years courtesy of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special-tax district near Orlando that allows Disney to self-govern the land that houses its resort.
Before DeSantis rescinded them, these privileges allowed Disney to skirt local government approval processes, regulations and “impact fees” levied on property developers, and other regulations that competitors still have to navigate.
DeSantis helped Disney before he decided to fight the company
But here’s the problem for DeSantis: as governor, he was also a purveyor of indefensible corporate welfare to Disney itself. In 2021, DeSantis signed a political anti-discrimination statute that penalized companies for engaging in viewpoint-based censorship on the internet. This was a signature piece of legislation in his anti-woke crusade, but the law specifically exempts companies in Florida that own a theme park larger than 25 acres. Disney’s internet properties and streaming services were exempted from a statute that was designed to stem corporate “wokeness” in Florida.
DeSantis’ own director of legislative affairs lobbied for the Disney loophole. DeSantis’ chief budget officer, policy chief and his then-general counsel also worked behind the curtain to change the terms of the bill to create the special carveout for Disney. Several lawmakers who voted in favor of that law had received campaign contributions from Disney.
In his February 2022 announcement that he was purging Disney’s perks, DeSantis declared: “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end, there’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.” That declaration falls flat when the same sheriff granted the corporate kingdom one of the crony capitalist privileges he ceremoniously cancelled.
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Disney’s lobbying-laced exemption from the 2021 political viewpoint discrimination statute is even more relevant than its special tax district status because the point of the law was to combat corporate “wokeness” itself. When Disney waded into Florida’s culture war, it’s as though karma answered DeSantis’ own call.
New legislation provided loopholes for Disney
Amazingly, Florida’s tech legislation continues to include new loopholes for Disney this year. A DeSantis-supported 2023 bill to safeguard technology companies from harvesting Floridians’ personal information is written in a way that would include traditional technology companies that own and operate internet properties − but not Disney − by applying to companies only if their online advertising accounts for 50% of the company’s revenue, despite Disney’s advanced online advertisement business.This is part of a broader pattern of behavior for DeSantis, a bait-and-switch headline strategy with respect to supposedly woke companies that he goes out of his way to protect. Take Florida’s relationship with BlackRock: DeSantis purported to take BlackRock to task by prominently announcing that Florida’s treasury would yank $2 billion in assets from the financial services company. The announcement was hailed by conservative media, notching yet another perceived political win for DeSantis in 2022.
But as with Disney, the move was just a PR stunt. The money Florida pulled wasn’t even causing the real ESG-related trouble. Florida claimed it pulled the money because it didn’t want to “fund BlackRock’s social engineering project.” But BlackRock pursues its environmental, social and governance investing strategy mainly via its clients’ stock holdings, where BlackRock leverages its position as the largest “shareholder” in American companies to push environmental and social goals. Florida’s $2 billion was largely in cash and bonds, not stocks, and it represented a fraction of the $13 billion total Florida had invested in BlackRock funds.
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Then in January, Florida and BlackRock struck a truce. BlackRock could continue to manage Florida’s $13 billion in pension assets, so long as it abandoned ESG investing strategies. But BlackRock hasn’t, and it won’t, even if Florida’s money is invested in ostensibly neutral index funds. That’s because BlackRock makes virtually no distinction in how it pursues environmental and social justice in its ESG vs its non-ESG funds.
When it comes to using those shares to push ESG goals on American companies, BlackRock uses every single share it controls. Just listen to BlackRock’s own comments: “[BlackRock] actually integrate[s] ESG . . . . regardless of whether that portfolio has an ESG objective or not”; “A sustainable fund uses ESG integration, yes, but a non-sustainable fund also uses ESG”; “BlackRock now makes environmental considerations part of all our investment decisions.”
DeSantis and the corporations he lambasts are in a peculiarly co-dependent relationship: the governor gets his conservative news media hits, while companies like Disney and BlackRock get to continue doing exactly what they wanted to in the first place. In the meantime, constituents of both political parties are left fighting over nothing of any real substance.
In 1900, a Republican governor with presidential aspirations stood up against what he considered to be corrupt political forces. New York Gov. Teddy Roosevelt coined a phrase that history remembers him for: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Today, Ron DeSantis may fashion himself in Teddy Roosevelt’s image, but he plays the part with a twist: speak loudly and carry a small stick.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
