By Clarence Page
At the Walt Disney Co., “The Empire Strikes Back” is more than a title of one of its “Star Wars” movies.
It also describes how Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, chastised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as “anti-business and anti-Florida” in the latest round of a bitter public battle between the Republican governor and state’s biggest and arguably most popular corporation.
The feuding began last year after the company spoke out against the controversial DeSantis-backed Florida law rebranded by its detractors as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The measure bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, as well as lessons deemed not age-appropriate.
After Disney objected amid mounting pressure from its employees to take a stand, DeSantis and his Republican allies in the state legislature put the squeeze on Walt Disney World, the 27,000-acre, half-century-old Orlando-area entertainment extravaganza that employs 75,000 people.
Asked about the fight at Disney’s annual shareholders’ meeting, Iger made his most direct criticism to date of Florida’s action. “Our point on this,” he said, “is that any action that thwarts those efforts simply to retaliate for a position the company took sounds not just anti-business, but it sounds anti-Florida.”
A governor who fusses with a major corporation that provides thousands of jobs and millions of tourists to the state that governor governs? Who would have expected it?
Yet, this bizarre (I would say “Bizarro World” but that’s from Superman’s DC Comics universe, not Disney’s. Not yet, anyway.) episode bracingly illustrates how easily rational politics can slip into a Never-Never Land where, even after the children grow up, politics doesn’t.
But this is where the Disney empire struck back. As the new Disney World oversight board installed by DeSantis was taking over in late March, they ran up against a big surprise. Just before their powers lapsed, the previous board had agreed to strip much of the board’s power to regulate the Disney World area and sharply increase Disney’s direct control over the giant park.
The land-use powers of the old board had been stripped away and given directly to Disney through an agreement that includes a “royal lives” clause to ensure its longevity.
That’s a centuries-old concept from English common law that makes the agreement valid forever or, at least, until the “death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England living as of the date of this Declaration.”
In yet another irony, the “last survivor” is believed to be 1-year-old Princess Lilibet of Sussex, who lives in California, home of the original Disneyland, with her parents, Prince Harry and Meghan, the duke and duchess of Sussex. Small world.
Ironically, the oversight committee was a compromise of sorts for DeSantis. He initially pledged to disband the autonomous tax district enacted in 1967 to prepare for what became Disney World. But disbanding the district, he later learned, could land local governments in central Florida with more than $1 billion in bond liabilities.
Now DeSantis has vowed to wrestle back control over the Disney site, declaring through a statement that “all legislative options are back on the table.”
We’ll see. If there is any valuable takeaway from this experience it might be, simply, read the fine print before you sign anything.
Such are the mixed dividends, so far, in DeSantis’ culture war and his apparent pursuit of the GOP presidential nomination. His feud with “wokeness” has put him at odds with corporations such as Disney that have pursued pro-diversity policies, not in opposition to sound business practices, as the “anti-woke” movement argues, but because of them.
It’s good business to draw from as wide a pool of potential employees and customers as possible, just as it’s good politics to appeal to as large a pool of voters as possible.
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things,” said Walt Disney, “because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
And, as Mickey told us in the original Mickey Mouse Club, a good education helps you to find the right path.
Clarence Page is a columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
