But more important, its Orlando complex of theme parks is the linchpin of the Sunshine State’s crucial tourism industry. Back in 2011, a study showed that Disney’s operations in the state accounted for $18 billion in revenue and 160,000 jobs. Now he’s moving to implement his implied threat. Ever since the “Don’t Say Gay” controversy broke out, DeSantis has been arguing that the whole thing was a mistake: “What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power,” DeSantis said March 31. Its special-status territory, which covered 38.5 square miles of mostly uninhabited land, was dubbed the Reedy Creek Improvement District. In 1967, Florida gave Disney the power to act more or less as a local government with taxing powers in order to build the original Magic Kingdom theme park. “Yes, they will be considering the congressional map but they also will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968 and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.” “I am announcing today that we are expanding the call of what they are going to be considering,” DeSantis said during a press conference at The Villages in Florida. Ron DeSantis announced on Tuesday that he is calling on the state legislature to consider legislation in a special session to dismantle special protections for Disney operating in Florida following the company’s opposition to a controversial parental rights bill. In the latest of a series of escalating threats to Disney based on its initially faint but growing opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law, DeSantis is going after the special concessions that made Disney World possible, as Fox News reports:įlorida Gov. Similarly, proponents of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and efforts to ban the alleged teaching of critical race theory are comfortable going after public schools, as conservatives have a long history of hostility to “government schools” and the public-sector unions they harbor.īut something more interesting has developed as the Republican Party wages its crusade against “corporate wokeness.” While conservatives previously focused their attacks mainly on distant corporations allegedly dispensing leftist ideology from Hollywood or Silicon Valley, Florida governor Ron DeSantis is now attacking the Walt Disney Company, his state’s top employer. If your principal audience is conservative Christians primed to believe that traditional values are under attack, it’s not too risky to beat up on LGBTQ+ kids and their adult supporters. Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesĪs conservatives have leaned even harder into culture-war themes in recent years, they’ve typically chosen easy targets.
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