TALLAHASSEE - It may be trite to point out that Mickey Mouse is a dirty rat but, regrettably, it remains true. Walt Disney World's bullying of the Florida High Speed Rail Authority, which has submitted to serving only Disney and no competing Orlando area destination, means that nothing has changed since the 1967 Legislature created what the Wall Street Journal aptly called "a self-governing corporate kingdom."
Arrogance has been the kingdom's modus operandi since the first (and as I recall only) local hearing where Central Florida residents could comment on the proposed legislation. There were precious few copies of the bills, which no one but Disney executives and the already captive Orlando-area delegations had seen in advance. Even so, a quick read was enough to tell that they amounted to surrender terms. If looks were lethal, I would have perished that day under the baleful glare of Disney's chief Florida counsel, who did not welcome any searching questions.
Sen. L.K. Edwards, a rotund white-suited cattleman from rural Marion County, broke the tension (and revealed the truth) by joking that he was reminded of the "company towns we had when I was a boy."
But I write today primarily to assert for the record that while many deserve the blame for making Florida into a Disney satellite, Gov. LeRoy Collins does not. Collins, who had left office in January 1961, was in Washington and Haydon Burns was governor when, by most accounts, Walt Disney Productions began secretly in 1965 to accumulate its vast lands. If anyone promised to give away the store, it was Burns, not Collins. Neither is alive to defend himself, but on the occasion of Burns' death in 1987 the Journal recalled how Walt Disney had once said of him, "Gov. Burns is a man who knows how to get things done."
The notion that Collins was complicit marred an otherwise fine column, "Alllll Aboard For the Extortion Express," by Tampa Tribune columnist Daniel Ruth Oct. 31.
"There's a story," he wrote, "perhaps a bit apocryphal, but probably not," that Disney had first broached the Florida venture to Collins, asking only that Florida "leave us alone ... " and that Collins "essentially said, "Okay, Mr. Disney. Whatever you want, Mr. Disney. Can I lick your other boot now, Mr. Disney?' Thus, for the past four decades, Florida has served as Walt Disney World's lawn jockey."'
The word "apocryphal" means "of doubtful authenticity," which seems to me to fairly describe that story. In three years of research for a biography of Collins, including the three major repositories of his papers, I have come across no evidence that Collins and Disney ever talked, let alone made any deal. Nor is any such connection mentioned in the Collins biography that historian Tom Wagy authored in 1985 or in Carl Hiaasen's 1998 book, Team Rodent, How Disney Devours the World.
"It may make a good story, but it's not true," said Mary Call Collins, the governor's widow, when I called her Friday. "That doesn't sound at all like anything Roy would ever have said."
"I never heard that he had anything to do with Disney," said former state Sen. Ed Price of Bradenton, who became Collins' closest friend and confidante. "I don't think it happened."
Jim Smith, a former attorney general and secretary of state who befriended the ex-governor late in his life, said Collins never mentioned Disney.
I could find only one person who thought that there might have been contacts between Collins and Disney. That was Bill Durden, a Jacksonville attorney who was the governor's last chief of staff. But Durden wasn't sure. One person who would surely know, he said, would have been John Perry, Collins' longest-serving press secretary.
Perry's e-mail to me:
"Where do people come up with bilge like this? The governor never even owned a Mickey Mouse watch."
I asked Ruth if he could document the story. Other than replying that "They started buying up the land in the Collins era" - which is contrary to what all other sources say - the columnist offered nothing to support it.
Had Collins had anything to do with Disney, he would have been proud to say so. Collins, like most if not all his successors, considered it the governor's job to tirelessly recruit industry. Howard Hughes once called him "the best salesman any state ever had."
But it was Hughes - not Disney - who accounted for Collins' greatest embarrassment. After months of negotiations - including a secretive trip Collins made to California at Hughes' behest - Hughes said in January 1956 that he had big plans for Forida. In April 1956, the reclusive billionaire sent Del Webb and other associates to a Tallahassee press conference to declare that he would build an enormous aircraft factory somewhere in the state.
The 1956 Democratic primary, in which Collins defeated three strident segregationists, was just a month away. His rivals cried foul.
Hughes never carried through on it. But the only promises made on that occasion were the ones that Hughes broke.
