Bob Iger rebuilt Disney. Fighting DeSantis could define his legacy.
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Bob Iger has twice considered running for president. The longtime Walt Disney Co. chief executive conferred with political strategists and pollsters, studied up on key issues, reviewed famous speeches and consulted his family, according to his memoir and news reports. But ultimately, he retired in 2020 and decided against launching a Democratic campaign for the White House.
Now, after boomeranging back to Disney, Iger finds himself in a high-profile political battle with a leading Republican. It’s shaping up to be one of the defining challenges of Iger’s career, with consumers and corporate America closely watching to see whether one of the country’s most powerful companies will face down a threat to its power and free speech.
Last week, Iger’s Disney sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for allegedly violating the company’s constitutional rights. DeSantis has threatened multiple times to punish Disney for opposing a bill the governor signed last year that prohibits public schools from covering homosexuality and gender identity. The governor is trying to strip the company of its self-governance, and has proposed that a prison or a competing theme park be built near Walt Disney World. The battle between DeSantis and Florida’s largest employer escalated Monday after the board that oversees Disney’s special taxing district countersued Disney.
In addition to overseeing Disney’s transformation into a modern media titan, Iger may end up being known “for putting DeSantis in his place,” says Michael Eisner, a former Disney CEO who worked with Iger for years. Although Disney has avoided wading into political issues in the past, Eisner said, “there are certain times you just have to stand up.”
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“I think he is stepping up to help Disney clean up a mess that’s been created by a bully,” Eisner said of Iger. “I think he’s decided this is important beyond Disney.”
Though he has hosted or co-hosted fundraisers for the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Democratic senators in recent years, Iger has generally positioned himself as a centrist, seeing inclusion as one of Disney’s key values. But he has increasingly spoken out on divisive issues — just as Disney has taken more of a stand on social and cultural issues.
At an April shareholders’ meeting, Iger argued that the governor’s efforts to penalize the company are “anti-Florida” and “anti-business.” DeSantis has “decided to retaliate against us” for how the company has exercised its constitutional right to free speech, Iger told shareholders. “And that just seems really wrong to me.”
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Disney declined to make Iger available for comment for this article.
Iger was among the top CEOs calling for national unity and calm through the turbulence of the 2020 presidential election, and he supported Merck CEO Ken Frazier in August 2017, when he resigned from one of President Donald Trump’s business advisory councils “to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.”
“Iger is bold, but not reckless, careful but not cowardly,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, president of Yale University’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Sonnenfeld added that Iger has made “courageous calls” throughout his career.
Last year, when Disney received blowback from employees and the public for not pushing back against state legislation derided by critics as Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill before it passed, Iger publicly broke from his handpicked successor at Disney, Bob Chapek, and came out against it. In February 2022, Iger shared a tweet from President Biden opposing the bill, adding: “If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.”
“A lot of these issues are not necessarily political,” Iger told CNN at the time. “It’s about right and wrong.”
Disney finds itself in uncharted territory as it falls under attack from Florida legislators, despite being one of the state’s biggest employers and economic partners, according to Aubrey Jewett, associate professor of politics at the University of Central Florida. But Iger’s expansive career has prepared him to lead Disney through this legal and public relations battle, Jewett said, pointing to how Iger successfully shepherded Disney through economic downturns and engineered game-changing acquisitions including Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.
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Iger got his start in media as a reporter and weatherman for a small television station in Ithaca, N.Y. His journey to the apex of the Walt Disney Co. started in 1974, when he worked as a studio supervisor at ABC, earning $150 a week. Iger spent 22 years climbing the ranks at ABC and more than two decades at Disney, after the company acquired ABC in 1995. He replaced Eisner in 2005, becoming the company’s sixth chief executive.
Eisner cites Iger’s communication skills and his ability to rise to challenges as contributing to his success at Disney’s helm. Those qualities have allowed Iger to bridge gaps between parties, whether he was negotiating international business or navigating a tough acquisition. Iger spearheaded the company’s international expansion, brokered marquee acquisitions and encouraged the early embrace of technology before retiring in 2020.
During Iger’s first stint leading Disney, from 2005 to 2020, total shareholder return was 578 percent, compared to 140 percent for the broader S&P 500. The company also added 70,000 jobs in that period.
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In November 2022, as Disney struggled to shake off the pandemic’s fallout, Iger returned to the top job. The company’s stock soared more than 9 percent upon news of Iger’s return.
In his first town hall after returning as CEO, Iger described inclusion as “one of the core values of our storytelling,” noting that the company would not diminish its values “to make everyone happy all the time,” Variety reported.
The climate Iger returned to was more fraught than what he had left behind: The streaming market had cooled; the theatrical business was floundering; some of Disney’s big franchises were in flux; and social polarization was threatening Disney’s brand of apolitical entertainment where all can feel welcome.
By his own estimation, Iger is pretty unflappable. In his memoir, he writes that managing Disney has been “a never-ending exercise in compartmentalization.” When things go awry, he tends “not to feel much anxiety.”
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Still, he’s “all too aware of the symbolic power of Disney as a target,” he writes, “and the one thing that weighs heavily on me is the knowledge that no matter how vigilant we are, we can’t prepare for everything.”
Disney’s strategy has always been to appeal to as many people as possible, said Sean Griffin, a film professor in Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, who wrote a book about the ties between Disney and LGBTQ culture.
“Disney as a company has navigated a kind of inclusivity as an absolute market strategy,” Griffin said. “The phrase they tend to use is ‘We welcome everybody,’ to which I add in: ‘to spend.’ ”
But Iger has acted boldly in other socially charged moments. In 2018, when Roseanne Barr posted a racist diatribe on Twitter against one of President Barack Obama’s former advisers, Iger quickly fired her, despite the fact that her show was a top performer for ABC at the time. The move provoked ire from some, including President Donald Trump, but it was “an easy decision,” Iger said in his memoir.
“I never asked what the financial repercussions would be, and didn’t care,” Iger wrote. “In moments like that, you have to look past whatever the commercial losses are and be guided, again, by the simple rule that there’s nothing more important than the quality and integrity of your people and your product.”
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When asked what Disney character he most relates to, Iger has pointed to Tinker Bell, the “Peter Pan” fairy who is powered by pure belief. When facing shareholders last month, Iger drew parallels between DeSantis’s efforts to silence CEOs and those who were bullied into staying quiet about human rights abuses during World War II.
“Those that stood in silence, in some ways, still carry the stain of indifference,” Iger said. “So as long as I’m on the job, I’m going to continue to be guided by a sense of decency and respect and trust our instincts that, when we do weigh in, we weigh in because the issue is truly relevant to our business and to the people that work for us.”
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Source: The Washington Post
