Behind heavily in the polls, presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has a message for Disney boss Bob Iger: You owe me.
Attempts by the Florida governor to build a run for the White House around a feud with his state’s largest employer backfired when the Mouse House fought back with a lawsuit that threatens to leave neither a winner.
Now DeSantis, who has recently come under fire among free-market Republican donors for his “fatal error” targeting corporations, wants bygones to be bygones and appealed to Iger to drop the case citing their strong relations in the past.
“No one has made Disney more money recently than me, because during COVID they were open in Florida. They were locked shut in California,” he told CNBC in comments aired on Monday.
Like virtually all companies in the entertainment and hospitality industries, the pandemic was a financial disaster for Disney.
According to its fiscal 2020 and 2021 accounts, Disney’s otherwise lucrative parks division alone incurred roughly $8.5 billion in combined losses over the two years. This doesn’t even include the nearly $600 million in total added charges for severance-related layoffs.
Walt Disney World near Orlando, a massive 25,000-acre resort roughly 50 times the size of California’s Disneyland, was however able to reopen in mid-July of 2020—albeit under numerous precautionary measures to safeguard public health and operating well under capacity.
By comparison, Disney openly expressed it was “extremely disappointed” that the state of California would not let it open its smaller theme park in Anaheim, Calif.
Disneyland only began welcoming visitors again on April 30 of the following year, after being closed for more than 13 months straight.
DeSantis urges Iger to drop the lawsuit against Florida
DeSantis, who on Monday was quick to remind Disney’s board they had a friend in him when they needed it most, now needs to call in as many favors as he can.
Donald Trump has opened up an almost unassailable lead in the polls. DeSantis was once the front-runner after the ex-president’s slate of candidates cost the GOP key races in the November midterm elections.
Yet the governor has seen his stock plummet amid criticism he comes across as wooden, inauthentic, and unrelatable. While campaigning at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, he was nearly drowned out by jeers.
In an effort to narrow the lead, DeSantis has shifted his sights onto Anheuser-Busch in hopes the luckless beer brewer proves an easier target.
Whereas he instructed Florida officials to examine a possible lawsuit against the Bud Light parent on behalf of his state’s employee pension fund, he explicitly said he would stop short of doing so when it came to Disney.
“We’ve basically moved on. They’re suing the state of Florida,” he said, speaking of Disney’s board during his CNBC interview on Monday. “They’re going to lose that lawsuit, so what I would say is, drop the lawsuit.”
Disney, which has threatened to pull investment out of the state amid claims of a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power,” could not be immediately reached by Fortune for comment.
