As Ron DeSantis continued to wage his Floridian culture war this week, wresting control of a Walt Disney Company-controlled county district, he also offered an insight into the kind of people he will value should the Republican governor successfully run for president in 2024.
DeSantis took control of Reedy Creek improvement district on Monday, and immediately installed five people to the district’s board, including the founder of a rightwing parent group, a Christian nationalist and a deep-pocketed Republican party donor.
It continues the Florida governor’s retaliation against Disney after the company opposed DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies last year.
Disney previously had control over Reedy Creek, home to the Walt Disney World Resort south-east of Orlando, including the power to decide what it builds in the area, but after incurring DeSantis’s wrath it was hastily stripped of those powers by the Republican legislature.
DeSantis then swiftly removed Reedy Creek’s existing Disney-appointed board. In its place, DeSantis plumped for Bridget Ziegler, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group which has been involved in book-banning efforts across the US; Ron Peri, a pastor who believes American military failures are down to the country not being Christian enough; and Martin Garcia, a Florida lawyer who donated $50,000 to DeSantis’s 2022 re-election campaign.
Ziegler’s promotion arguably makes the most sense, given the support she and Moms for Liberty have given to DeSantis as he has railed against LGBTQ+ people and issues. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Ziegler helped craft the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed the “don’t say gay” law, which prohibits teachers from discussing sexual orientation through third grade.
A school board member from Sarasota county, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Reedy Creek, Ziegler co-founded Moms for Liberty in 2021, a Republican party-linked group which has lobbied for books – mostly books addressing LGBTQ+ or race issues, and written by LGBTQ+ people or people of color – to be removed from schools.
Ziegler donated $1,000 to a group backing DeSantis’s re-election campaign, and another Ziegler-Republican party link comes in the form of her husband, Christian Ziegler, who was recently appointed chairman of the Republican party of Florida.
The appointment of Peri might seem a little more left-field, but Peri, who is the founder of the Gathering Forum, an online Christian ministry where he hosts weekly video sermons, has, like Ziegler, railed against school curricula and expressed scepticism over school reading lists.
Peri, who has described school boards as “off the rails in this country”, also believes America was founded as a Christian nation. Peri has sought to destigmatize the term Christian nationalism: a concept described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as combining “American exceptionalism – the belief that the US occupies a special and privileged place in the world – with the belief that God is the source of all American liberties and prosperity”.
Peri expounded on that belief in a video in 2021.
“Our founders established a covenant with God [and] dedicated this nation to him”, Peri said. He said that covenant had “protected” the US for many years, but said America’s weakening embrace of Christianity is now responsible for America’s military failures.
“The blessings of that relationship with God that we’ve had as a nation has dissipated,” Peri said.
“And now instead of consistently winning war after war we have Afghanistan the most embarrassing failure, perhaps, in history.”
He added that there is “deep-rooted anger at Christians in America” and said: “I believe with all my heart that it is critical that this nation be dedicated to God.”
Peri’s most recent video was devoted to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence program which can write essays and stories and answer questions of varying complexity. Peri said he had asked the program about proteins, and after reading its answer he concluded: “Chat GPT is not a Darwinist.”
He described chatbots as “really very powerful”, but added: “It’s not something to be afraid of. It’s like any new technology: it is ultimately designed for the glory of God. The internet is for the glory of God.”
Martin Garcia’s views on ChatGPT are unknown, but his commitment to Republican politics is clear. A Tampa lawyer and prolific Republican party donor, Garcia’s Pinehill Capital Partners company donated $50,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis Pac during the governor’s re-election campaign.
Pinehill, which Garcia chairs, also gave $25,000 to Conservatives for Principled Leadership, which was one of DeSantis’s biggest donors in 2022.
The board is rounded out by Mike Sasso and Brian Aungst, a pair of Florida lawyers who appear to have become favorites of DeSantis in the past two years.
DeSantis appointed Sasso to the Valencia college district board of trustees in July 2021, to the Public Employees Relations Commission in December 2021, and to the Construction Industry Licensing Board in April 2022.
Aungst, whose father served as the Republican mayor of Clearwater, Florida, had previously been appointed by DeSantis to the sixth circuit judicial nominating commission, Politico reported.
The bill to strip Disney of its Reedy Creek powers passed the Republican-dominated Florida house and senate earlier in February, when it was criticized by Democrats as a crackdown on free speech.
“This bill sends a message from the governor to businesses in our state that if they dissent, they will be punished,” said Rita Harris, a Democrat in the Florida house of representatives.
“And this is chilling. It’s not just chilling to me, it’s chilling to freedom of speech.”
DeSantis’s Reedy Creek takeover comes as he is widely expected to enter the race for president. The governor is currently on a nationwide book tour, and is reportedly planning to travel to early presidential primary states in the next few weeks.
A presidential campaign would pit DeSantis against Donald Trump, who has been attacking DeSantis for months. Polls show Trump with a clear lead against his younger rival.
