Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially called the state legislature into special session for a deeply unfortunate reason. The Republican governor demanded that lawmakers turn over the redistricting powers to him, so that he could carve up districts with large Black populations and give the GOP a larger partisan advantage through brazen gerrymandering.
The Republican-led legislature agreed and that process began in earnest yesterday.
But as it turns out, the to-do list for the special legislative session just got a little longer. NBC News reported:
Disney crossed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by opposing his law restricting schools from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity. Now DeSantis and his fellow Republicans in the Florida Legislature are ready to make the company pay for it. In a surprise move, DeSantis on Tuesday asked the lawmakers to consider eliminating the special taxing district that allows the company to act as a type of local government.
The governor told reporters that as part of the special session, Florida legislators “will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968, and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”
As many Floridians know, the Reedy Creek initiative refers to the extraordinary Orlando-area benefits originally afforded to the Disney Corporation in 1967. As NBC News’ report added, under the unique arrangement, the company doesn’t have to deal with property taxes or any local government regulations.
At first blush, the fact that state policymakers are going to revisit generous benefits to a massive, multi-national corporation might seem like a popular move, even on the left. (As regular readers might recall, I’m a native Floridian, and I’ve long marveled at just how expansive Disney’s benefits are in the Sunshine State.)
But motivations matter, too.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, it’s worth understanding how we arrived at this point. Florida Republicans recently approved what some have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” policy, and Disney — a major force in the state — eventually criticized the GOP’s anti-LGBTQ measure.
Soon after, DeSantis and his allies decided such criticisms could not stand, and a retaliation campaign took shape. The governor said Disney “crossed the line” by daring to oppose his regressive anti-gay policy, and Republican policymakers in the state put Disney’s special corporate benefits on the table.
For the GOP, Disney has an obligation not to criticize the Republicans’ culture war — and because the corporate giant fell out of line, it must now be punished.
In case this isn’t obvious, there’s ample room for a spirited debate over how policymakers approach special corporate benefits. To have concerns about how Republicans are approaching these issues is not to say that Disney or any other private-sector giant somehow deserves lucrative breaks from politicians. What matters in this instance, however, is the brazen perversion of the GOP’s free-market principles. This is a case in which a political party wants to selectively punish a specific business because it had the audacity to say something unflattering about anti-LGBTQ politicians. It wasn’t long ago when Republicans seemed perfectly content to leave Disney’s breaks intact, but after the corporation hurt GOP officials’ feelings, it’s apparently time for retaliatory measures — in part to punish Disney, and in part to send a message to other corporations that might also be tempted to say things Republicans don’t like. The larger significance of such a posture is an important shift in the party’s tactics. As The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell explained in a recent column, “The GOP no longer argues that free markets, rather than government, should choose ‘winners and losers.’ In today’s Republican Party, the primary economic role of the state is not to get out of the way. It is, instead, to reward friends and crush political enemies.” Quite right. As we’ve discussed, what we’re witnessing isn’t a change in Republican Party orthodoxy related to the free market, but rather, a corruption of that orthodoxy. Those who fall out of line, and dare to express societal opinions that Republicans find inconvenient, should expect adverse governmental consequences. The power of the state, the argument goes, must serve as an extension of the Republican Party’s cultural grievances, and businesses whose opinions are deemed unacceptable will be punished accordingly. Corporate giants that appear “woke” should expect to be bullied into submission by those controlling the levers of governmental power. The significance has little to do with Disney and everything to with the party’s embrace of authoritarian tactics.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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