Ron DeSantis tried to give $25 million to a gun company
Ron DeSantis tried to give $25 million to a gun company
Emails show the DeSantis administration dangled a big incentive package in front of rifle-maker Remington Firearms. But Remington's top executive worried Florida couldn't train qualified workers.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to get gunmaker Remington Firearms to move to Florida in exchange for than $25 million in grants, tax breaks and other incentives, according to emails obtained through public-records requests.
DeSantis, who is now running for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, was apparently hoping to make headlines with news that the nation’s oldest manufacturer of firearms would ditch its longtime home in New York for Florida. But he couldn’t close the deal — at least in part, the emails suggest, because Remington’s top executive did not trust that Florida could train an adequate workforce for his company.
“I have a number of major concerns/hurdles to get over before tying the company to a lifelong home in Florida,” Remington CEO Ken D’Arcy wrote in a May 2022 email to Marc Adler, the then-president and CEO of Enterprise Florida, the state’s business-recruitment agency. Adler forwarded the note on to DeSantis’ office.
“Of primary concern is the workforce,” D’Arcy wrote. “The greatest production facility and the best backing does absolutely nothing if there isn’t a long line of people wanting to work there.”
The Governor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did D’Arcy or spokespeople for Remington, which makes rifles and shotguns and traces its corporate history back to 1816.
Details of the failed courtship turned up in emails produced by the Governor’s Office in response to several public-records requests, one of which was submitted by Seeking Rents but also others that were made by different people and organizations.
They include a Feb. 10, 2022, email between two senior staffers in the DeSantis administration that included a document detailing the parameters of an incentive package for an unidentified firearms manufacturer.
The proposed offer included $20 million in taxpayer money plus land at Indian River State College in southeast Florida upon which the company would build a new factory. The DeSantis administration was also offering another $5 million in grants and a nearly $3 million tax break — with the promise of more, according to the document.
The email doesn’t explicitly identify Remington. It uses only an economic-development codename: “Project Carey.”
But two months later, D’Arcy, the Remington CEO, sent his email to Enterprise Florida in which he expressed concern about whether Florida would be able to produce the employees his company would need.
“I understand your push to get a resolution on this,” D’Arcy wrote. “However, this is not something I’m willing to enter into without full awareness of what I may be committing the company to.”
There is ample evidence to tying the two emails together.
For instance, a spokesperson for Indian River State College confirmed that the school had discussions with Remington about leasing land to the company for a facility that would have been funded in part by the state of Florida. The project ultimately did not go forward.
What’s more, in the February email outlining the proposed incentive package for Project Carey, the targeted company was described as a “small arms manufacturer seeking relocation of operations from the Northeast to the Southeast U.S.” The email also said the company was considering an offer from the state of Georgia. And it said that the company’s CEO lives in Florida.
Remington is based in upstate New York. But it is in the midst of moving to LaGrange, Ga., after Georgia state officials pledged incentives including a $13 million tax break. And while it’s not clear if Remington CEO D’Arcy has a home in Florida, one of Remington’s owners — paintball entrepreneur Richmond Italia — lives in Fort Lauderdale.
DeSantis appears to have been excited to make the announcement. A third email — sent March 23, 2022, by a scheduler in the Governor’s Office to DeSantis’ leadership team — outlined a draft event schedule for the governor. That schedule included a tentative press conference to be staged at Indian River State College.
The topic? “Remington funding.”
It’s not clear when Florida first began negotiating with Remington. A fourth email shows that DeSantis had a tentative meeting scheduled with Italia in mid-December 2021.
But it is clear that those talks continued long after Remington publicly announced that it would would relocate its headquarters and open a new factory in Georgia.
Florida appears to have been chasing the same project.
In the document outlining Florida’s proposed incentive package for “Project Carey,” it claims the company would make a $111 million capital investment and create 850 jobs over five years. When Remington announced that it would move to Georgia, the company claimed it would invest $100 million and hire 856 people over five years.
It’s possible that Remington never had any real interest in moving to Florida and the company was simply using the DeSantis administration as leverage to squeeze extra subsidies out of Georgia.
The company, whose corporate predecessor went bankrupt in 2018 and again in 2020, has a history of playing communities against each other. Remington once moved two lines of manufacturing from New York to Alabama after the state offered nearly $70 million and rent-free factory space, according to Time magazine.
The factory ultimately failed, and Remington moved some of the equipment back to New York.
But what may be most illuminating about the episode is the blunt appraisal by Remington’s CEO of Florida’s workforce development efforts — or lack thereof.
“Is there a strong workforce in the area to support a company like Remington?” D’Arcy wrote in his email to Enterprise Florida. “Are we able to get the best of the best plant manager, maintenance manager, line supervisors, HR, cost accountants, environment & safety officer, compliance manager, to mention only a few.
“I already know, only 6.5% of the workforce is in the Manufacturing Sector, this is extremely low for a company like Remington to consider this as an adequate work force,” he added. “In normal circumstances, the workforce, or in this case lack of workforce, would disqualify FL.”
While the Remington recruitment collapsed, Indian River State College is pressing forward with plans for an “advanced manufacturing hub” on its main campus in Fort Pierce, which the school said will allow it to expand manufacturing-training options for students.
And the whole episode is a reminder of how important such education and training programs are for sustainable economic development and diversification.
But it’s also why the increasing political interference in Florida’s colleges and universities — the institutions responsible for delivering much of that education and training — is so dangerous.
In just the past 18 months or so, DeSantis has signed laws that set new limits on the kinds of academic programs that colleges and universities can offer and weaken tenure protections for professors (House Bill 7 and Senate Bill 7044 in 2022, Senate Bill 266 in 2023)
At the same time, his political appointees overseeing the state’s most prestigious university — the University of Florida — handed the school’s presidency to former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) without publicly considering any other candidates for the job.
Meanwhile, the DeSantis administration has also directly intervened in at least two other presidential searches.
In one case, a rural state college subsequently lowered its job standards in order to hire a state representative who had been supportive of DeSantis in the Florida Legislature.
In the other, a major university was forced to suspend its search process because the search committee did not recommend DeSantis’ preferred candidate — another state representative who has helped DeSantis in Tallahassee. That search remains stuck in limbo.
And then there’s the continuing chaos at New College of Florida, where DeSantis overhauled the school’s leadership with instructions to transform the tiny liberal arts university in Sarasota into an explicitly conservative college.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported this week that New College just plummeted in an influential national ranking — dropping 24 spots to a tie for 100th in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of liberal arts schools.
Update: After this story published, the Governor’s Office responded to acknowledge that the state had offered an incentive package to Remington but that the deal ultimately fell through. Jeremy Redfern, a spokesperson for DeSantis, also noted that the DeSantis administration had awarded a grant in to support Indian River State College’s advanced manufacturing hub, which, Redfern said, could serve other firearm or defense-related manufacturers.
“Over the last four years, Florida has invested over $6.8 billion in workforce education initiatives and added more than one million people to the workforce,” Redfern said. “With these investments into Florida's workforce education, we invite any firearms manufacturer looking to relocate from a state that doesn't respect the U.S. Constitution to give us a call.”
Good f**king grief, we HAVE to vote these despicable, dangerous fascists out of power. Funny how the party that is so vocally vehement about protecting children’s lives & welfare has state officials who are fighting & bending over backwards to be the one who gets the big gun factory when guns are the leading cause of death for American children
Haha, after reading more of the article I’d like to revise my comment to add that Desantis is also a rube for getting played by Remington and pitted against neighboring state, Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Garcia, for this fun and informative read!