Creeping Fascism, Florida Style
Three recent moves by Gov. DeSantis against businesses in Florida should raise alarm bells
Over the past week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continued to show us who he is. Taking a page out of Victor Orban of Hungary’s playbook (after borrowing heavily from it to enact the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law in Florida), DeSantis is seeing how far and often he can bully companies that don’t agree with his political views or agenda.
His targets this time included none other than the Special Olympics and the Tampa Bay Rays professional baseball team—two organizations that, in normal political waters, a sitting governor would not seek to bait. But this is Florida where an extreme GOP supermajority controls the legislature and a state supreme court stands ready to rubber stamp his actions. So here we are.
The Special Olympics had imposed a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for its games in Orlando over the weekend. Per a scoop by Jay O’Brien of ABC News, in response the Florida Department of Health nonetheless sent a letter dated June 2 that threatened to assess the Special Olympics a $27.5 million fine due to “5,500 violations” of state law prohibiting business entities (including charitable organizations) from requiring individuals to show proof of vaccination, based on the applicable fine per person of $5,000. The state claimed the Special Olympics rule conflicted with state law and had disqualified Special Olympics athletes from competing based on their vaccine status. Rather than fight the fine, the Special Olympics lifted its vaccine requirement. “We don’t want to fight. We want to play.”
Critics quickly pointed out that many participants in the Special Olympics fall within particularly vulnerable or immune-compromised groups when it comes to Covid-19, and that DeSantis’s move, apparently done to score political points, put many participants at increased risk. DeSantis nevertheless claimed during a press conference last Friday that the organization’s decision “will be a relief to a lot of the athletes.”
The threatened fine comes on the heels of DeSantis using the power of his line-item veto to cancel $35 million in funding for the Tampa Bay Rays spring training facility. The timing behind the cancelation remains curious because it occurred right after the team had put out a statement addressing the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings. “The Rays organization stands committed to actionable change and has made a $50,000 commitment to Everytown for Gun Safety’s Support Fund,” the organization stated. It was initially unclear whether the governor’s unexpected veto of the funding was directly connected to that statement, as the right-wing site Outkick initially claimed and the Daily Wire amplified. Further, as WTSP reported from Tampa, “DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw retweeted Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who shared a link to an article suggesting the decision was made in response to the baseball team taking a position on gun violence prevention.”
When asked about the Rays’ statement and his veto, DeSantis hedged his answer, saying that he doesn’t “support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums, period” and “that was just the decision that was going to be made.” He paid lip service to the First Amendment rights of companies but then appeared to again put his finger on the scale and use the veto to make a dangerous political point. “Companies are free to engage or not engage in whatever discourse they want, but clearly, it’s inappropriate to be doing taxpayer dollars for professional sports stadiums,” DeSantis began, before adding, “It’s also inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation. So I think either way, it’s not appropriate.”
This is quite a statement. Taken at face value, DeSantis believes that any corporation or organization that receives any kind of funding or financial incentives from the state of Florida could be said to be receiving “subsidies” that thereafter prevent the company from taking any kind political stand—particularly one with which the governor disagrees. The First Amendment implications of this are enormous. But DeSantis knows this and apparently wishes to test its limits.
DeSantis’s political battles with big companies doing business in his state had kicked off with a high profile fight with Disney, one of the state’s largest employers, which had eventually come out forcefully against the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill he had signed into law. As punishment, DeSantis sought to end Disney’s special tax district status, which has long provided the company a right of self-governance over its real estate properties. DeSantis rammed a bill through the GOP-controlled legislature to strip Disney of that special status, and the move is being challenged in court as an overreach.
What these three instances show, quite clearly, is a pattern by DeSantis of using the state to bend the will of private companies in Florida and to silence critics of his office or party’s policies, whether over vaccines, gun safety, or LGBTQ+ rights. This is a kind of media strategy that follows the path of other avowed illiberal, Christian nationalist leaders like Orban, who used his power and connections to take control of major media in his country in order to control the political narrative and propaganda. The far-right doesn’t try to hide its adoration for Orban. CPAC recently held its conference in Budapest with Orban as its keynote speaker, where he advised the audience that the key to power was to control the messaging. “Have your own media,” Orban urged. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.”
DeSantis can’t control the media as outright, but he can use his office to chill the speech of his critics. His goal is not to win in each separate battle but to send a clear message to other corporations: “Cross me and you’ll be sorry.” The response by the corporate community must be similarly clear and firm: “Try this further and we’ll take our business elsewhere.” To force corporations to act, however, will take a concerted effort by consumers to draw attention to DeSantis’s strategy and practices. DeSantis knows this risk and so in each instance he is being careful to shroud his moves in plausible deniability (as he did with the Special Olympics and the Tampa Bay Rays) or to bring the full weight of the national culture wars to bear and play the part of a loyal commander in that war, as he has done by accusing Disney of “woke” politics for daring to speak out against his discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ+ law.
If there is any leader who poses a greater threat to the foundational pillars and the vibrancy of our democracy, it is Gov. Ron DeSantis, who happens to be the top choice among Republicans behind former president Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 and even recently narrowly beat Trump in a straw poll in favorability among conservatives at the Western Conservative Summit this past weekend in Denver. Defeating DeSantis at the polls this November should therefore be a priority not only for Floridians but for all who wish not to slide further toward strongman politics. If DeSantis is permitted to gain control of the White House, the powers he would wield, combined with his ruthlessness and his strategic and cunning nature, could make Trump look like simply a warm up to something far more dangerous and destructive.
The problem is that the Florida Democratic Party is in woeful disarray. Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried both continue to compete for the Democratic nomination, and every day there is not a single candidate to unite sane Floridians against DeSantis is a day that strengthens his chances at reelection, as well as those of Marco Rubio, who faces a strong challenger in Val Demings.
The key to victory in Florida is registering and turning out 18-40 year olds--especially 18-30 year olds. But I see no well-organized (ala Stacey Abrams) effort in the state.
Note that DeSantis only won by 33,000 votes, 0.4% of the total cast, in 2018. He should be very vulnerable, if the Florida Democrats can get their act together.
I’ve always been extremely good at recognizing patterns. And the pattern I see happening in the USA is looking very similar to so many other countries who fell to Authoritarian Dictators.
These types of people, make all sorts of nefarious decisions and changes, in many cases to see how the populace reacts. And again as in so many places, in history, ancient and modern, the populace doesn’t pay any attention because they’re lives are taken up with just day to day survival. Then one day they wake up and find themselves under a man, and it’s always a man, who now thanks to his own machinations, has the power of life and death over them.
In the not too distant future, if the patterns I see continue, all of you will wake up one day to find that you live in a dystopian world, where all pregnant women are taken to “special” facilities to give birth, where science goes out the window completely and women will be treated as criminals if the miscarry or produce a female child. Where the only people who have any rights at all are those who work for the Great Leader, and being shot, on any given day is a 50/50 chance.
There is just not enough people in the USA who care enough, or have enough ability to think critically to see what’s unfolding right in front of all of you. The majority will always follow the lead, and if the lead says, “Joe Biden” isn’t doing a good enough job, vote Republican!”, then they will, because they don’t have the skills to separate out the lies from the truth. leaving authoritarian wannabes like De Santos, in the White House.
And although THAT will wake up the populace, it will be far too late to change anything, because once these types of people are in power, it’s almost impossible to remove them!