Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis premised his entire still-unannounced 2024 presidential bid on being “Trump without the baggage.” But with Walt Disney Co. now pulling the plug on a $1 billion investment in the Sunshine State amid a feud with the GOP hopeful, DeSantis is looking a lot more like “not-Trump with the baggage.”'
DeSantis' costly dustup with Disney began last year when Republican state lawmakers started debating passage of the governor's now-infamous "Don't Say Gay" law, which banned classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and was recently expanded to cover kindergarten through 12th grade.
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“If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy,” tweeted Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger on Feb. 24, 2022.
At the urging of DeSantis, Republican lawmakers approved the bill anyway, but just this Wednesday DeSantis supercharged the dispute when he signed a package of measures banning gender-affirming care for minors, barring trans Americans from using public restrooms aligning with their genders (i.e., a bathroom bill), and restricting drag performances—a veritable smorgasbord of anti-transgender hate.
Just one day later, DeSantis joined the ranks of several red-state governors with national ambitions who signed anti-LGBTQ legislation only to watch it become their undoing.
If DeSantis finds himself looking for a North Star, former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory can light the way. After backing a discriminatory “bathroom bill” in 2016, McCrory became a rare Democratic bright spot in a dismal national cycle when he lost reelection to Democrat Roy Cooper, now the sitting governor of the Tar Heel State. Since then, the erstwhile Republican rising star has repeatedly failed to resurrect his political career. Last year McCrory finally called it quits for good after losing a U.S. Senate primary to now-Sen. Ted Budd. But as Daily Kos posited in 2016 of McCrory's gubernatorial implosion, how many others will follow?
If there's good news for DeSantis, it's that McCrory's transphobic bathroom bill was anticipated to cost North Carolina nearly $4 billion in lost revenues. So relatively speaking, DeSantis can still point to McCrory as the bigger loser.
But McCrory isn't the only cautionary tale of a red-state governor dooming his presidential ambitions with anti-LGBTQ legislation. Former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence actually blazed that trail in 2015, privately signing a bill that ensured a right to religious bigotry, including the refusal of services to same-sex couples looking for wedding cakes, florists, chapels, or even help with adoptions.
Pence's indefensible hatemongering led to a March 2015 career-ending appearance on ABC's “This Week” in which he was given no fewer than six opportunities to say the so-called “religious freedom” bill would not result in discrimination against gay and transgender individuals, and proved unable to do so.
By that summer, Pence was on a path to potentially losing reelection. A June 2015 poll conducted by a Republican pollster of Bellwether Research found Pence's reputation plummeting "following a controversy over Indiana's religious freedom law, with 54 percent of voters saying they favor a new governor. Less than a third said they would re-elect Pence."
As Daily Kos wrote at the time:
Put a marker here—because this is the exact place that every Republican who harbors national ambitions while living in the land of yesteryear can expect to find themselves at some future, if yet uncertain, date.
When Donald Trump tapped Pence as his running mate in July 2016, Indiana Republicans were grateful for the off-ramp from Pence's anti-LGBTQ debacle.
Interestingly, business executives have been integral to each of these Republican downfalls. In Indiana, both Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Angie's List CEO Bill Oesterle played pivotal roles in gutting Pence. In late March 2015 Salesforce canceled all programming events in the Hoosier State, while Angie's List halted a $40 million expansion due to the discriminatory bill.
North Carolina lost a boatload of revenue, but none cut as deeply or publicly as when the NCAA yanked all tournaments from the basketball-obsessed state just a couple months before voters gave McCrory his walking papers.
Could DeSantis still survive his row with Disney and Bill Iger? Sure. But dollars to donuts he won't. No one wants a president who picked a fight with the most beloved company on the planet and lost a billion dollars in the process.
Jennifer Fernandez Ancona from Way to Win joins Markos and Kerry to talk about the new messaging the Democratic Party’s national candidates are employing going into 2024. Ancona was right about the messaging needed to win the midterms, and we think she’s right about 2024.