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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill Friday that would strip Disney of its self-governing status.
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He recently signed a controversial education bill and proposed a GOP-beneficial reclassification card.
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A top Florida lawmaker said the Disney law is diverting attention from the state’s reclassification plan.
A top Florida state legislator said he believes there is an ulterior motive behind Governor Ron Desantis stripping Disney of special tax status in an ongoing feud over the state’s controversial education law, which proponents and critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
On Friday, DeSantis signed a bill that would end by June 2023 a special tax and governance area — in which the landowners are primarily Walt Disney World — known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
But Senate Leader Gary Farmer told Insider that DeSantis’ public dispute with Disney is diverting attention from other legislative agendas the Florida governor has put forward — namely, the new proposed reclassification map that would give the GOP an edge in the state at the cost of black voters.
“Governor DeSantis’s attack on Disney was intended to serve as a smokescreen for the much devious original and peculiar purpose of this special session, the approval of a racist and unconstitutional reclassification plan,” Farmer said.
The rescission bill came after Disney denounced the state’s controversial parental rights legislation in education. In a statement on March 28, the company vowed to actively work to repeal the legislation, saying it “should never have been passed and never signed into law”.
In response, DeSantis said Disney “crossed the line” with their calls to repeal the legislation, saying “this state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida” and not “by the demands of California business leaders.”
Speaking at a news conference at the bill’s signing on Friday, DeSantis said the state legislature viewed the company’s rejection as a “provocation.”
“You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you’re going to pool your economic power to attack the parents of my state,” DeSantis said. “We see that as a provocation and we are going to rebel against it.”
His feelings were shared by Lt. Gov Jeanette Nunes. On Thursday, Newsmax presenter Eric Bolling early Nuñes or the governor would reconsider revoking Disney’s special tax status if the company gave up its “wakeful” agenda, to which she replied, “Of course.”
Move to Disband Reedy Creek Marks Third Legislative Win for DeSantis
Aside from implementing the state’s controversial education law and subsequently punishing Disney for speaking out against the legislation, DeSantis has racked up a string of legislative victories, including pushing a reclassification map that would reduce the number of predominantly black districts.
On March 28, the same day DeSantis signed the state’s parental rights education bill, DeSantis vetoed a version of the congressional card approved by state legislators that would have added two Republican seats and one of the Democrats would have deducted, according to The New York Times.
On Wednesday, the Florida Senate passed DeSantis’ congressional card during a special session that would instead create 20 likely Republican seats and leave eight for Democrats, The Times reported.
DeSantis claimed the existence of such districts is “racially gerrymanded”, adding that the new congressional card issued by his office would be “race neutral”.
“I mean, we’re not going to have a 200-mile gerrymander dividing people based on the color of their skin,” DeSantis said, per CNN. ‘That’s wrong. That’s not the way we’ve governed the state of Florida.”
Despite the larger political implications and fallout of DeSantis’s realignment plan, Farmer said the governor waging a war on Disney has diverted media attention from the new proposed congressional map.
“On the same day this anti-Disney measure was passed, the legislature also rammed into an unconstitutional, illegal, and racially motivated realignment plan that halved Florida’s black representation in Congress,” Farmer said.
He added: “Nobody really expects this Reedy Creek solution to actually happen, but the threat of sending black voters’ rights 50 years into the past is very, very real. That’s what we should all be talking about today.” to have.”
DeSantis representatives did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
