There’s no defense, as the Head Ball Coach might put it, like a good offense. Certainly, Steve Spurrier’s University of Florida football teams had oodles of offense, winning multiple conference crowns and the school’s first national championship during a great 1990s run. And being offensive is the irreducible trait and trademark of that other local headline generator, Florida Man.
But even companies headquartered far from Florida are embracing the lesson, especially when their single biggest investment there is facing repeated political punishment from yet another Florida Man, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s foremost culture warrior and presumed 2024 presidential candidate.
Last week, Disney filed a federal lawsuit accusing the diminutive DeSantis of digging in his high-heeled cowboy boots to illegally retaliate after the company exercised its Supreme Court-validated First Amendment rights to free speech and free spending. Basically, the suit says, DeSantis went after the Mouse House because it questioned an odious bit of political posturing, DeSantis’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” bill that limits school discussions of sexuality and gender.
The suit has big implications for both Disney’s Iger-led transformation, and for DeSantis’s wilting presidential aspirations. That’s the real reason to watch the suit, as its unintended consequences play out for both sides.
“Don’t Say Gay” is one of a string of DeSantis-backed laws, including one banning abortions after six weeks. They’re all designed to burnish his bona fides with hard-right conservative voters who presumably need compelling reasons to ditch beloved avatar Donald Trump, already campaigning hard for 2024.
The suit is straightforward enough: then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, after prodding from outraged employees (and a high-profile Iger tweet), said something mildly critical about the Don’t Say Gay law.
DeSantis and his legislative supermajority responded by trying to hit Disney where it hurt, abolishing the special district the state created decades ago to give Disney greater control over development of a vast swathe of Central Florida swampland.
Billions of dollars later, that swampland is now better known as the Magic Kingdom. Disney investments in the Orlando area now employ around 75,000 people, and bring tens of billions of dollars in tourism annually to the region.
The back-and-forths since the initial bill have been amusing to watch from afar, but the important thing here is that they’ve continued, even escalated. Given continued DeSantis threats — like promising to raise taxes, increase ride inspections and even build a prison next to Walt Disney World — the retaliation lawsuit may be the last, best option for the Happiest Place on Earth to stay that way.
The reality is that Disney needed to find a way to stop what looks like pretty clear-cut political retaliation that could get worse if DeSantis continues to double down. Both state-level regulators and the replacement special district have lots of ways to make the Magic Kingdom much less so. The tools for mayhem against a political enemy are manifold for a motivated pol and his pals, as DeSantis is demonstrating.
Except, in a ham-handed deviation from standard political practice, DeSantis has bragged publicly and repeatedly about the targeted paybacks. Normally, as you stick the knife in, you don’t talk about it to everyone who’ll listen.
See also, Lyndon Johnson, a grandmaster of no-fingerprints retribution. As just one epic instance, a couple of years after Amarillo became the only Texas city to vote against native son Johnson in 1964, its huge Air Force base was shut down as surplus … in the middle of the Vietnam War. The city took two decades to recover.
DeSantis had other motivations for announcing his plans, mostly to signal that he can corral and cudgel a giant “woke” corporation espousing views antithetical to family values. You know, like Disney.
But DeSantis’ lack of discretion, many First Amendment poobahs have opined, should make Disney’s case fairly straightforward and expensive for the state. Whether it ends up being expensive for DeSantis specifically, or for what Iger is trying to do at Disney, is what will play out in the next several months and beyond.
DeSantis, for one, is already checking off all the pre-campaign prerequisites to run for president: write a book, build foreign-policy cred by visiting U.S. allies such as Israel and Japan, push a bunch of high-profile bills through a pliable legislature. Also, line up prominent politicians and, especially, donors to finance your actual campaign.
While Trump has relentlessly cultivated members of Congress and deep-pocketed donors, DeSantis has been beating up on Disney and not cultivating those backers. Going forward, his tardy cultivation process now gets to split time with depositions, discovery and distractions over divulging lots of previously secret communications with cronies.
It’s impossible to know what might be tucked away in DeSantis’s text messages, emails and other communications, but private messages have proved problematic in other situations in the past. Just look at the brand murder that Fox News inflicted on itself in the just-settled Dominion libel case. The summarily dispatched Tucker Carlson was just one victim of the fallout, though hardly a blameless one.
But this escalating fight has implications for Disney, too.
Remember that Iger has a two-year clock ticking since his Thanksgiving eve return. As I’ve written previously, he has a lot to get done, not least finding some more politically adept executive than Chapek to succeed him as CEO at the end of 2024.
He, too, will have a new set of distractions, depositions and discovery to deal with, while managing everything else. Is this really the highest and best use of Iger’s dwindling time back on top? How does the suit and related political strategizing impact the choice of Iger’s successor? Do they need to know not just movie and TV production, streaming video, sports rights, cruise lines, parks, consumer merchandise and video games, but politics, too?
SuperBob is still probably more than up for the task, even at age 72, but he might actually break a sweat juggling it all.
Another Iger checklist item also played out this past week, as 4,000 employees were laid off from ESPN, parks and other operations, part of Iger’s larger streamlining plan to cut Disney’s workforce about 3%, get finances back in the black and resume paying a dividend to shareholders.
The company has said it plans to spend another $17 billion developing attractions in the Orlando area. Disney also has been moving many parks and resorts employees to offices there. Now, all that’s potentially on hold too, given the DeSantis-driven regulatory uncertainty.
DeSantis may have pushed through Don’t Say Gay for near-term political advantage. Chapek may have responded poorly while similarly expecting everything would quickly blow over.
But the effects of repeated tit-for-tat, the stakes for a presidential wanna-be and now a massive lawsuit, will continue to play out in Florida for years to come, long after DeSantis and Iger are gone. As even the Head Ball Coach would acknowledge, even a great offense doesn’t guarantee the kind of win either side would want.
