So, the "Don't piss off Ron DeSantis or he'll throw a tantrum" bill has passed both houses of the Florida legislature and awaits DeSantis's signature.
How will that affect his prospects for re-election this November?
An off-the-cuff assessment might look something like this:
"Hey, the base likes it, and Orange and Osceola Counties went Democrat in 2018 anyway, so fuck'em, I don't need their votes."
But let's look at the numbers a little more closely.
In 2018, DeSantis only won election by a margin of 32,463 votes out of more than 8 million votes cast.
About 475,000 votes were cast in Orange County, which he lost with 174,229 votes to Andrew Gillum's 296,257.
About 112,000 votes were cast in Osceola County, which he lost with 44, 627 votes to Gillum's 68,707.
Ceteris paribus, if 16,232 -- 7.4% -- of the 218,856 people who voted for him in 2018 in those two counties decide to vote Democrat instead this year, he's out.
What could possibly turn 7.4% of DeSantis's 2018 voters in Orange and Osceola Counties against him?
Disney's "special tax district" collects $105 million in annual revenue from itself, i.e. from Disney, which it spends providing government and government-type services in the district. With this bill, those services, and that money, vanish into thin air. Or, rather, $105 million in taxes prospectively gets shoved onto the shoulders of voters of Orange and Osceola Counties.
Oh, and the district has bond liabilities of up to $2 billion which, with the disappearance of the district, will immediately become liabilities of Orange and Osceola Counties. So even more taxes for all those voters.
I could see that not just swinging 7.4% of DeSantis's vote to the other column, but also driving Democratic turnout up.
There are other respects in which deciding to go after Disney may be political suicide for DeSantis (would you want Disney running against you if you were trying to become president?), but these are big ones. If he can't even hold on to the governorship of Florida, why would 2024 GOP presidential primary voters think he has a shot at the White House?
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