by Charlotte Hazard
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking the state’s investment manager to consider legal action against Bud Light parent company AB InBev over recent controversial marketing tactics.
CNN obtained a letter Thursday that states DeSantis suggests that AB InBev “breached legal duties owed to its shareholders” when it decided to associate with “radical social ideologies.”
Bud Light sales dropped significantly after the brand partnered with transgender TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a marketing campaign.
Sales dropped 24.4% in the four-week period ending June 3, accounting for 7.3% of total American beer sales.
DeSantis, also a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, wrote that “all options are on the table,” in the letter, but it’s not clear what kind of legal recourse can be taken.
“We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling,” DeSantis wrote to Lamar Taylor, the interim director of the State Board of Administration.
DeSantis recently did an interview with Fox News in which he said Bud Light did not follow its “fiduciary duty” when it partnered with Mulvaney.
“When you start pursuing a political agenda at the expense of your shareholders, that’s not just impacting very wealthy people. It impacts hardworking people who were police officers, firefighters, and teachers in terms of the pension,” DeSantis said during the interview.
“So we’re going to be launching an inquiry about Bud Light and InBev, and it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund because at the end of the day, there’s got to be penalties when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people.”
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Charlotte Hazard is a 2022 Liberty University alumni who graduated with a major in journalism and a minor in government.
Photo “Ron DeSantis” by Government of Japan. CC BY 4.0.
