Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared war on Disney, as well as Orlando-area taxpayers. Oh, and Black voters.

 

The Republican-controlled Florida Senate quickly voted Wednesday to dissolve Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District and for a congressional redistricting map that eliminates two Black districts and tilts the balance of the delegation more Republican.

Both measures were pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which one Democrat called a “hijack” of the Legislature’s duties.

Lawmakers originally came to Tallahassee on Tuesday to take up a congressional map drawn by DeSantis’ office after he vetoed two maps approved by the Legislature during the regular session.

But less than an hour before the special session began, he expanded it to include a bill dissolving Reedy Creek, which independently governs the Orlando resort, and another bill retracting a special carveout that protected Disney from liability in the so-called Big Tech law from 2021.

Just a day later, the Senate voted 23-16 to dissolve Reedy Creek, with Sen. Jeff Brandes of Pinellas Park the only Republican to vote against Sen. Jennifer Bradley’s bill. The Senate voted 24-15 along party lines to approve Bradley’s bill retracting the Disney carveout, which was found unconstitutional by a federal judge.

Critics of the governor say the bills were meant to punish Disney, Florida’s largest single-site employer, for opposing the so-called “don’t say gay” law signed by DeSantis last month.

The bills were filed almost as soon as he called for the expanded session, raising questions about who wrote them and whether the sponsors were forced to carry them for the governor.

Democrats assailed their Republican colleagues for capitulating to DeSantis out of fear of facing primary opponents or having their projects vetoed from the budget rather than acting as the independently elected lawmakers they are supposed to be.

“I didn’t think we were going to acquiesce and let the governor hijack that process,” Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Black Democrat from Miami Gardens, said during the morning debate on the Senate version of the redistricting bill. “What we now see in the Senate we used to only see in the House. We used to be happy when bad bills came to the Senate because that’s where bad bills came to die.”

“If this is going to happen from now on, there is no need to show up,” Jones said.

[ OPINION: Vengeful DeSantis stampedes lawmakers to attack Disney ]

Jones, and other senators, Democrat and Republican, conceded that the redistricting map was going to wind up in court no matter what the outcome. Democrats were especially critical of an amendment added Tuesday that requires all lawsuits challenging the redistricting map to be filed in Leon Circuit Court, an attempt to sidestep the federal court in Tallahassee where most election cases have been challenged and found unconstitutional.

The map DeSantis introduced achieves his stated goal to eliminate the minority-majority District 5 that sprawls across North Florida from Jacksonville to Tallahassee and replaces it with a district that is only 12% Black. It also diminishes the Black voting population in District 10 in Orlando, moving a large number into the Republican-friendly District 11. The map reduces predominantly Black districts from four to two.

 

Tennessee did the same thing with Nashville's congressional district and got away with it.

 

Seriously, all Republicans, and Republican voters care about, is punishing the people who are not on their side, to the point of costing taxpayers millions, and disenfranchising as many Black voters as they can get away with.

 

It's all punishment of those people, all the time.  Anyone who doesn't toe the line is made to suffer by the power of the state. A government of white grievance retribution, for angry white folk, by angry white folk, and the rest of us are increasingly being targeted.

They want that nationally. They're likely to get it.