Ron DeSantis Accused of Wasting Retirees' Money on Bud Light Lawsuit

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is receiving criticism for focusing a new investigation into Bud Light's business and marketing practices for claimed negative effects on state retirees' pension funds as the effect is small in the grand scheme.

DeSantis, who in May announced his candidacy to be the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee, has regularly criticized what he calls "woke ideologies" while in office and on the campaign trail. Critics have lambasted him for perceived anti-LGBTQ+ policies, book bans, teaching a different side of Black history, and for his "Don't Say Gay" bill that sparked a legal battle with Disney.

Bud Light's partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney in the spring led to the company's market value taking a drastic drop. Criticism against that marketing campaign sparked a wave of similar cases against major companies, including Target, based on the perceived targeting of children in terms of LGBTQ+ clothing and advertising.

"We've kneecapped ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) in Florida," DeSantis tweeted on Friday. "So, I'm calling for an investigation into AB InBev's actions regarding their Bud Light marketing campaign and falling stock prices. All options are on the table and woke corporations that put ideology ahead of returns should be on notice."

InBev, the world's largest brewer, purchased Anheuser-Busch in 2008.

A letter accompanying DeSantis' tweet says that Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA), which oversees pension funds for public employees, currently holds global equity assets with AB InBev and must address funds for police officers, teachers, firefighters and first responders, and should stray from "radical social ideologies."

"Clearly, the board's mismanagement has led to this impasse—as well as its failure to remediate the problem and repair its relationship with millions of disaffected American consumers—will continue to financially harm the SBA and other shareholders," DeSantis wrote to Lamar Taylor, interim director of the SBA.

DeSantis went on to say that AB InBev "may have breached legal duties" with shareholders, vowing that "all options are on the table."

A spokesperson for DeSantis declined to comment to Newsweek, referring to the governor's letter.

Newsweek reached out to the SBA, Anheuser-Busch and InBev via email for comment.

Joanna Schwartz, marketing professor at Georgia College & State University, told Newsweek that DeSantis' new effort is "remarkably misguided" considering Bud Light has advertised to the LGBTQ+ consumer base years before Mulvaney entered the picture.

"If his State Board of Administration wasn't aware that the company targeted the LGBTQ+ community, then that's seemingly a lack of due diligence on their part rather than a problem with AB InBev's business strategy," Schwartz said. "It also begs the question of why the state of Florida would be so heavily invested in a foreign-based alcohol company as to dramatically impact the state's pension portfolio.

"The one certainty is that AB InBev had a small influencer campaign that went very wrong; the firm wasn't trying to lose market share and value."

In an interview on Thursday evening with Fox News' Jesse Watters, DeSantis claimed that a political agenda by Bud Light "at the expense of shareholders" is negatively affecting the public workers.

"There's got to be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda," DeSantis said, reiterating his stance against companies like Disney.

In January, months before Bud Light's partnership with Mulvaney became public, the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan reported a 6.7 percent, or $14.24 billion, investment loss for the fiscal year ending June 30—down from the previous year's return of 29.46 percent, according to the investment monitoring website Chief Information Officer.

The same month, Taylor told members of the Florida House Constitutional Rights, Rule of Law & Government Operations Subcommittee that the SBA would look at anything that would benefit the best risk and return for beneficiaries—including those advocating to fight climate change, Orlando Weekly reported.

"Did this man [DeSantis] go to law school?" tweeted Richard Painter, a lawyer and former White House ethics czar in the George W. Bush administration. "Has he ever heard of the business judgment rule? He'll waste state retirees' money on a bogus suit so he can go on Fox News and run for president?"

"Wouldn't a pension fund hold hundreds of different companies?" asked another Twitter user. "Aren't Republicans supposed to be pro business and anti-govern interference?"

Florida and other investors create diversified portfolios in an effort to optimize returns, Schwartz said. She called the targeting of one company, in this instance Anheuser-Busch, "nonsensical" considering that stock and bond values constantly fluctuate.

If DeSantis and the state of Florida are willing to limit investments in any companies that target to the LGBTQ+ market, a vast majority of the Fortune 500 firms that drive the U.S. and world economy would also be on the table for potential legal action, she added.

"This isn't a serious legal proposal," she said. "It seems an obvious attempt by Governor DeSantis to tie his image, and that of his presidential campaign, to the people who no longer drink Bud Light because of the backlash against the brand....He appears to just be trying to curate an image of using political power to impact corporate values that don't align with his own.

"In a political environment where he has had trouble getting traction as a strong conservative brand, this is a way to try to appeal to a core part of that market."