Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ handpicked board on the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD) announced this week that it has ended all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
District Administrator Glenton Gilzean announced the abolition of the programs that were adopted by the former Reedy Creek Improvement District that “discriminated against Americans based on gender and race, costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” according to the CFTOD.
The district’s DEI committee “will be dissolved and any DEI job duties will be eliminated,” the statement said, adding that staff “will also no longer be permitted to use any staff time to pursue DEI initiatives.”
Gilzean said in a statement that the old district’s DEI initiatives “were illegal and simply un-American.”
“Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal,” he added. “As the former head of the Central Florida Urban League, a civil rights organization, I can say definitively that our community thrives only when we work together despite our differences.”
The statement said that the DEI initiatives had also cost the former Reedy Creek Improvement District “millions of dollars more in order to find businesses who could comply.”
The news is a political win for DeSantis, who is currently running for president and stands in second place in the Republican primary field behind former President Donald Trump.
No other candidates poll anywhere near double digits, according to The New York Times/Siena poll, which is rated by FiveThirtyEight as the top poll in the nation. The poll shows a dramatic drop off after DeSantis with the next closest candidates barely registering with voters as former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley all sit at 3%. The remaining candidates all sit at 2% or less.
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While Trump appears to be dominant at the moment with just over half of the vote in The New York Times/Siena poll, the poll showed that nearly half of the respondents who chose Trump in the poll — 46% — say that they are “considering other candidates.”
Zach Jewell contributed to this report.
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