Can We Stop Pretending Ron DeSantis Is for Free Markets?

A quick read of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Wall Street Journal op-ed touting his recent elimination of the Walt Disney Co.’s self-governing status might leave you with the impression that the Florida Republican is a stout defender of the free market and the impartial rule of law.

The legislation he signed took down “an indefensible example of corporate welfare,” DeSantis wrote. It put an end to unfair state favoritism secured by “the company’s unrivaled political power,” broke with “old-guard corporate Republicanism” that “confer[red] special benefits on entrenched corporate interests” at the expense of the public, and will force Disney “to live under the same laws as… every other company in our state.”

But a closer look reveals that freeing Florida’s markets and leveling the legal playing field—as his defenders have framed the change—are not DeSantis’ concern here. By his own account, this isn’t a principled stand against corporatism, nor is his move against Disney primarily an economic project. His ends are explicitly political, and his means create market conditions just as unfair as the old corporatist dispensation he’s undone.

Disney’s previous arrangement, called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, began in 1967—a date whose relevance will become apparent momentarily. It let the company function as its own county government, administering local services (like road maintenance and sewage) and regulations (like zoning decisions and building codes) for roughly 39 square miles consisting mostly (but, technically, not entirely) of Disney properties. The district has the power to tax (which generally means levying taxes on Disney itself) and even to use eminent domain outside its own boundaries.

The bill DeSantis signed did make some substantive changes to how this district will function. It “ends Disney’s exemption from state regulatory reviews and approvals that other companies must go through,” as a Journal report summarized. “It also eliminates the company’s ability, under existing law, to build nuclear facilities, airports and toll roads, as well as to unilaterally make boundary changes to the company’s property.”

Some of this won’t matter much—Disney never exercised its right to build a nuclear reactor, and it retains the right “to build a fifth theme park, two additional water parks, and thousands of hotel rooms on 850 acres” between now and 2032. But after the law takes effect in June, the company will face higher costs and a greater regulatory burden. And local taxpayers will have to pay for infrastructure maintenance and other local government services like policing that previously went on the company’s tab.

But the most significant part of this legislation isn’t about infrastructure or economics. It’s about political power.

The new law doesn’t eliminate Disney’s special district. It renames it, and it takes authority to appoint the district’s five-member board of directors away from Disney—and gives it to Ron DeSantis.

Predictably, DeSantis promptly populated the board with political allies, and though their legal purview is mundane local services stuff, he openly envisioned them using the power they now wield over Disney to coerce the company into culture war concessions. “When you lose your way, you’ve got to have people that are going to tell you the truth,” DeSantis said. “I think all of these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate.”

He emphasized that political logic in his op-ed, too. The “woke ascendancy” in American corporations is what forced him to reject the old GOP corporatism, DeSantis explained. “When corporations try to use their economic power to advance a woke agenda, they become political” actors, he said, and must be fought with political weapons.

The details of the new legislation reiterate how little this has to do with freedom or equality before the law despite DeSantis’ lip service to those ideas. When he first floated the idea of changing Disney’s status last year, he spoke of the state legislature terminating “all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968”—and Reedy Creek, recall, dates to 1967.

But as it turns out, terminating all pre-1968 special districts would affect a lot more than Disney.

As DeSantis acknowledged in the Journal op-ed, “special districts are common in Florida.” In fact, the state has more than 1,900 active special districts per the list currently available from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Around 300 of them were created in 1967 or earlier, which is likely part of why the final legislation didn’t proceed along the lines DeSantis initially sketched.

On the contrary, the new law terminated exactly zero special districts, not even Disney’s. “Reedy Creek Improvement District shall continue to be a public corporation of this state and have perpetual existence,” the legislation declared. It simply reapportioned power away from Disney and to the state of Florida.

This isn’t a shift from bigger government to smaller, from control to freedom, from special privileges to fair play.

Maybe it’s accurate to say it’s a step away from corporatism, as Disney does seem to have enjoyed an easier path to development than nearby competitors. But it’s not a step toward any clear principle of liberty—the chosen solution wasn’t to give those competitors the same right to self-regulate—nor even toward meaningfully unmaking this weird public-private amalgam which half a century of Disney-Florida relations has birthed. If anything, should the new board successfully use its power of the purse to manipulate Disney programming, the state-corporate link will be stronger than ever.

You don’t have to disagree with DeSantis on culture war issues, or care about free markets, or, in the governor’s phrase, return to “reflexively deferring to big business” to see the risk that entails.

As another GOP governor, New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu, warned, if Republicans are “trying to beat the Democrats at being big-government authoritarians, remember what’s going to happen. Eventually, [Democrats will] have power… and then they’ll start penalizing conservative businesses and conservative nonprofits and conservative ideas.”

So they will. And nothing in this episode suggests DeSantis has real qualms about big, authoritarian government. He just wants it to do his bidding.