Walt Disney is now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ stand-in for any business that promotes diversity and what he terms ‘woke’ principles.
The presidential candidate could have attacked Starbucks, Target, or a number of other businesses instead of the corporation that brings in billions of dollars in tourism to his state so that political marketing choice looks to be quite wrong.
DeSantis Targets Disney
While plainly supporting values with which DeSantis disagrees, Starbucks (SBUX – Get Free Report) and Target (TGT – Get Free Report) did not directly criticize the governor. Bob Chapek, a former CEO of Walt Disney (DIS) – Get Free Report, did precisely that by publicly opposing DeSantis’ alleged “don’t speak gay” law.
Chapek probably never intended to do that, but after numerous Disney World employees in Florida expressed their displeasure that their employer did not defend LGBTQ+ rights, he publicly denounced the legislation.
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DeSantis’ Failed Attempt to Tarnish Disney’s Reputation
Bob Iger, the company’s current CEO, has not had to address any specific concerns, although he has stated that Disney has the option to divert any of the $17 billion allocated for Florida expansion to other projects.
DeSantis chose Disney partly because the company had criticized him and also because it seemed like a straightforward target. In order to set an example for other businesses, he threatened to make the company pay if it supported LGBT rights, diversity, or inclusion concerns.
While the governor refers to it as a war on woke, it is basically a branding strategy in which he wants to improve his profile by making comparisons to well-known people who support ideologies that he finds unacceptable.
Naturally, the goal is to diminish Disney’s reputation in order to boost DeSantis’ popularity. But, a recent poll makes it clear that their attempts were unsuccessful.
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