Disney Plans to Wait Out Ron DeSantis – The epic battle between the Mickey Mouse Corporation and Florida Man, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, rages.
Walt Disney World Epcot. Taken by 19FortyFive on April 19, 2023.
This pitched fight has progressed from angry Twitter exchanges and caustic executive action aimed at curbing Disney’s undesirable behavior in Florida to full-on legal challenges.
For most of the fight, Ron DeSantis had the upper hand and used that to deftly position himself as the most obvious successor to embattled former President Donald J. Trump in the race to become the Republican Party’s next presidential candidate.
The new phase of the conflict between Disney and DeSantis, however, inherently favors the multinational corporation worth billions of dollars. By making this his signature issue; the calling card which he will use to entice possible voters in the 2024 Republican Party Presidential Primary, DeSantis has created an unintended vulnerability for himself.
Disney had not truly fought back until recently. The company had taken its hits from Tallahassee and continued operating as if all was well in the Sunshine State. Things have changed (as has the leadership of the Walt Disney Corporation).
The Great War Rages
DeSantis threatened to take away Disney’s special tax-exempt status in Florida. While he stopped just short of doing that, the Florida governor did complicate Disney’s governance in the Reedy Creek Improvement District, where Walt Disney World is located. In this special improvement zone, Disney acted as a fiefdom onto itself. The company ran the police department, fire department, and EMT services.
What’s more, they managed the roads in that exclusive area. DeSantis revoked Disney’s special status by making the company report to a special advisory board staffed by DeSantis loyalists.
The company initially told the press that it would not fight Governor DeSantis. That soon changed, however, and Walt Disney Corporation discovered a loophole in the law that it could use to complicate DeSantis’ best-laid plans. Whereas DeSantis was getting quick, easy, and free press, displaying his decisive and bold leadership style by taking on the Disney Corporation, now Disney giddily begs DeSantis in the meandering courts.
Disney Uses Insurgency Tactics on DeSantis
Once inside the labyrinthine court system, where everything will be contested, Disney will use its sizable resources to ground the governor down—all as DeSantis increasingly seeks to shift his focus away from this matter toward the 2024 Presidential Election. And the longer the fight drags out with no decisive victory for DeSantis, the more it damages DeSantis’ standing in public.
This was supposed to be DeSantis’ Austerlitz. Instead, it is becoming his Waterloo—an epic battle that the great general (in this case, DeSantis) was supposed to win only to be undone not by a shoemaker-turned-general (as was Napoleon’s fate at the hands of General Wellington at Waterloo), but by a giant, cartoon mouse character.
Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney World. Image was taken in December 2022 by 19FortyFive.
DeSantis will need a better strategy going forward to absolve himself of this mess. Disney outplayed him on this one. He made his point already and highlighted the grievous abuses that the Disney Corporation was engaged in, using their special status as a key element of Florida’s amazing economy to try to force and intimidate Florida’s elected leaders into ignoring the popular will of the Florida voters on important social issues.
Don’t Wait ‘Til ’28!
But, if DeSantis has greater ambitions that will take him beyond Florida in 2024, he cannot still have this war raging between his team and Disney. If he does, in fact, wait until 2028 (a very bad idea), then this is less of a concern.
Waiting another four years to run, though, will be political suicide. His time is now or never. Wrap up the fight with Disney, get back to Tallahassee, have a successful end to the legislative session, and get on with the 2024 campaign, is what I say.
Walt Disney World Tron. Image Taken on April 19, 2023. Image is property of 19FortyFive.com
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
