DeSantis Attack on ESG Repudiates Its Superior Returns
The Florida governor's vendetta against "woke capital" will only deprive taxpayers access to the big gains associated with environment, social and governance investing.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a message for the state’s pension funds.
Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Why is the first-term governor of Florida the most visible opponent of Wall Street's fastest-growing and best-performing business? If you're 43-year-old, Yale University and Harvard Law School-educated Navy veteran Ron DeSantis, getting everyone's attention makes perfect political sense, if only to bolster your position as the preferred Republican successor to Donald Trump.
Revoking Walt Disney Co.'s special tax and self-governing privileges when the state's largest private employer criticized the DeSantis law prohibiting classroom instruction about sexual orientation was just his first provocation this year. That was followed by his redrawing of a congressional map diminishing Black representation, suspending the elected state prosecutor of Tampa for refusing to enforce the state's 15-week abortion ban and announcing new election police pressing criminal charges against 20 people for mistakenly voting in 2020 in a dubious crackdown on insignificant voter fraud.