In signs that you probably don’t want to see if you’re trying to maintain the economy of your state, the extreme policy decisions made by Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis have helped drive an increasing tide of event changes, meaning organizers are going elsewhere.
And some of these gatherings that, as of current plans, will no longer be happening in any Florida community are massive, meaning the local communities are missing out on business that could have been associated with the events. “The National Society of Black Engineers’ 50th conference, which would have brought up to 15,000 visitors to the Orange County Convention Center in 2024, will now be held in a different city,” the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported last week.
Other examples were also well into the thousands in terms of their expected attendance levels. The 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference would have used more than 2,000 local hotel rooms and now will be taking place elsewhere. A local body in the southern jurisdiction Broward County has chronicled more than half a dozen conventions moving their plans from that county alone, which includes Fort Lauderdale and is south of the Palm Beach area, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago sits.
Even the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons — meaning a masonic group — has scrapped their plans for a 2024 convention in Florida, bringing what could have been nearly 900 booked rooms (and the accompanying local spending) with them.
DeSantis’s team was predictably defiant when pressed, but they’re also still pretending like Ron has a reasonably solid shot at winning the 2024 presidential nomination from the Republican Party, so ignoring the basic reality in front of them is kind of their specialty these days. (You can’t pretend like massive gaps between DeSantis and Trump in polling with voting only months away just don’t mean anything!) Other economic concerns could also stem from the decisions of DeSantis to target the LGBTQ+ community, educational freedom, free expression, teaching Black history in schools, reproductive healthcare, migrants, and others. For instance, will Florida really be able to keep filling its teaching positions in such a harsh environment for anyone who doesn’t fit Ron’s mold?
