The Great White DeSantis et al.

State schools, Sunbiz, State Funds, Sunshine (Laws), and the DEI Decoy.

Collage image sources following article.

BY KEVIN DANKO | June 8, 2025

In late February 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made the three-and-a-half-hour trip from Tallahassee to Tavares, the county seat of Lake County, FL, for a ceremony to pardon the Groveland Four, a group of young black men wrongfully accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman and assaulting her husband in 1949.

Governor Ron DeSantis, local and state officials, and surviving family members unveil a monument commemorating the Groveland Four on Feb. 21, 2020. Photo: Orlando Sentinel.

A posse hunted down and killed one of the young men shortly after the alleged event. Sheriff Willis V. McCall, titular character of Gilbert King’s 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning  “Devil in the Grove,” shot two of them in claimed self-defense while escorting them to a court appearance.

One of them lived. The surviving two each spent over a decade in prison.

Left: New York Post, Nov. 7, 1951. Right: “View of Sheriff McCall and Shooting Victims.” Florida Memory.

Somber in his words, DeSantis, a Harvard Law graduate, called the events “a miscarriage of justice.” Said DeSantis at the time:

“I don’t know that there’s any way you can look at this case and think that those ideals of justice were satisfied. Indeed, they were perverted, time and time again.”

Don’t let him fool you. Ron DeSantis was “woke.”

Why would a public figure go to such lengths to pose in opposition to social justice?

A half percent.

DeSantis won his first election by one half percentage point.

Attacks on DEI, on colleges, are leveled at minority groups, the LGBTQ+ community, and students—voting blocks that favor Democrats. DEI is a numbers game.

DeSantis aims to make Florida repellent to a margin of voters that will secure his party’s dominance in future elections, in what had been a purple state.

My wife and I decided to leave Florida shortly after, in the summer of 2023, “Protesters carrying Nazi flags and DeSantis imagery gathered outside Disney World in Orlando, Florida”—repeatedly—with DeSantis in obstinate silence each time to calls to condemn, if nothing else, them marching under his banner.

I could have waited out the political winds.

The following summer, DeSantis signed new bills codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of “antisemitism” as Florida law, and earmarking funds for increased protective measures at Jewish schools.

It’s not prejudice. It’s politics.

The DeSantis design for college president.

I was a student at the University of Florida when Ben Sasse arrived, the first in a barrage of appointments of a new model of college president, partisan politicians with loose or limited ties to academia and side LLCs.

Sasse had a patchwork career history that included Ivy League degrees, a few entries in a middle school encyclopedia framed as scholarly work, a year as a junior management consultant, a absentee tenure at UT Austin in the late 2000s, five short-term, part-time gigs as a bureaucrat in the George W. Bush administration, and one-and-one-third terms as the junior senator from Nebraska—a passport’s worth of stamps from shiny brands passing for credentials when flashed.

A decade prior, as president of Midland Lutheran College, the small Lutheran school in his hometown of 27,000, Sasse’s arrival and tenure defied convention or clear description. In his first six months, he executed staff and budget cuts while overseeing a new donor-funded, million-dollar campus health sciences initiative, then overhauled the school’s transfer program—all without being an employee of the school.

Sasse was paid as a consultant, 250% of his first-year salary, roughly the amount he cut from the school’s budget. The consulting company the school paid is registered to Sasse as a sole proprietorship, somewhere outside of the country

Within months he changed the school’s name to Midland University, removing “Lutheran” to downplay its religious heritage and adding graduate programs to qualify the college as a university.

He overhauled the school’s identity, giving it a slick new brand—changing its logo, its colors, its mascot—and in the switch gutted the board, removing all vestiges of Lutheran representation, updating bylaws to make “trustees” into “directors,” giving them greater financial control, and getting started converting restricted endowment funds to unrestricted endowment funds.

He increased the number of athletic programs and incentivized enrollment with tuition discounts called “scholarships.” The number of players on the school’s baseball team, a sport fielded with 35 players at the collegiate level, doubled.

Over his tenure, Sasse’s salary nearly did as well.

Endowments to enrollment.

Midland’s endowment is relatively small, under $12 million at the time, when compared to that of New College of Florida, a school half the size of Midland by current student population, with an endowment of nearly $55 million as of February 2024.

Procession of presidents a cohort.

Sasse was a test case, and a trojan horse—an intermediary step, a qualifying prop that could be posed in academic regalia.

Sasse was a draft.

Two months later, in appointing Richard Corcoran—former Florida state representative, former chief-of-staff to current United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, state education commissioner at the time of his appointment—as president of New College of Florida, Florida’s public liberal arts college, DeSantis had mastered the mold for his ideal Florida university president, minting the business model.

Home-grown and pugnacious, Corcoran co-founded twin lobbying and law firms, Continental Strategy LLC and Continental PLLC, the month he resigned as state education commissioner and eight months before being named president of New College, a period during which he claims to have grown both businesses to over $5 million in revenue.

Lobbying billings for Continental Strategy LLC show a more modest $400,000 during that time period.

Continental Strategy LLC and Continental PLLC share principals and operate out of the same office locations in,Washington, D.C., Tallahassee and Miami, FL, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

According to the Florida Bar Association, Corcoran’s wife is an attorney with Continental PLLC.

New, New College.

Corcoran hit the ground punching, forcing out foundation board members and staff and replacing them with connected allies, including naming Sydney Gruters, married to Joe Gruters, as executive director of the school’s foundation, trusted to administer the $55 million endowment.

Joe Gruters is treasurer of the Republic National Committee, and former Florida senator and house representative; while serving as Florida Republican Party chair in the early 2010s, his party investigated him over sloppy bookkeeping and an $80,000 discrepancy in party finances.

Gruters is an accountant by trade. He currently operates at least three accounting-focused LLCs, as a sole proprietor or with partners, among other curiously-named entities.

Sasse’s great uncle paid his salary at Midland. At New College, past donors tithe Corcoran’s.

By law, Florida can only fund $200,000 of Corcoran’s base $700,000 salary (which is $400,000 more than his predecessor’s, and with provisions for an additional $200,000 in bonuses).

As the rest, by Florida law, must come from private sources, Corcoran leads an aggressive push to convert restricted endowment funds to unrestricted funds—as Sasse did—to pay his own salary.

Like Sasse, Corcoran is spending school money to establish new college athletic programs, at a time when colleges are negotiating what NIL dollars they can claim.

Like Sasse, he updated the school’s identity, giving it a slick new brand—new logo, colors, shield, seal, iconography, mascot.

A former DeSantis spokesperson on $15,000 monthly retainer implemented the new brand.

Nebraska, Florida.

Sasse was assigned, as a primary task at the University of Florida, with grafting the Hamilton Center—a new “shadow college” backed by unknown operatives and secret advocates, onto the University of Florida proper; with a curriculum mirroring the “Great Books” program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, where Sasse studied three decades prior.

More valuable in Sasse’s education than his master’s from St. John’s, is his apprenticeship as an adolescent under his grandfather, Elmer Sasse, Midland’s business manager for over thirty years.

Sasse learned the family business early, how to invest, and how academic and religious institutions benefit from special tax exemptions—like not paying property or sales tax—and how to help wealthy donors strategize their charitable giving.

Under Corcoran, New College sought to launch a scaled-down digital version of The Hamilton Center, The Ricketts Great Books College, funded by Joe Ricketts, father of Pete Ricketts, the Nebraska senator appointed to Sasse’s vacated Senate seat.

The elder Ricketts, billionaire founder of T.D. Ameritrade, owner of the Chicago Cubs, served as New College’s first graduation speaker under the Corcoran regime, against vocal protests from a captive student body.

Ricketts owns several private high schools and invests in education curriculum and technology, disseminating an extensive catalogue of digital lessons and exercises to, according to his companies, 1,700 schools and one million students internationally.

New Corcorans, new college franchises…

Marva Johnson, named interim president of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Florida’s only HBCU, in June of 2025, owns a Florida real estate development and management company co-managed by a company registered to a family home in Georgia, a trust registered to a P.O. Box in Jacksonville, and a tax consultant.

Johnson lives in Central Florida, two-and-a-half hours from the Jacksonville UPS Store listed as her real estate company’s primary place of business.

Johnson is Group Vice President of State Government Affairs for Charter Communications, a company which, in the months leading up to her selection as FAMU president, paid the consulting firm Corcoran founded $90,000.

Corcoran and Johnson served together on the Florida Board of Governors.

Since January, Corcoran’s firm has also received payments from several Florida public universities: $25,000 from New College, $15,000 from Florida International University, and $30,000 from the University of North Florida.

In 2025, the Eastern Florida State College Foundation has paid Corcoran Partners, the lobbying firm founded and managed by Corcoran’s brother and sister-in-law, which also employs Corcoran’s sister, $24,000.

DeSantis’s Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez, named president of Florida International University in early 2025, owns several businesses active in Florida, including, notably, one named “L-5 Overseas, LLC.”

Manny Diaz Jr., Corcoran’s replacement as state education commissioner following Corcoran’s departure for New College, again emulated his predecessor in May 2025, accepting an interim appointment to the presidency of the University of West Florida.

Diaz Jr., also a former state representative and senator, is the only DeSantis appointee other than Sasse with previous executive experience in higher ed, having served as the Chief Operations Officer of Doral College, a small private college west of Miami which achieved accreditation midway through his nine-year tenure at the school, from 2013-2022.

Doral’s student population is 4,400, comprised in major part of dual-enrolled high school students.

When it comes to these students, Doral has operated as a private charter school, with vouchers for tuition.

Diaz Jr. started at Doral months after declaring bankruptcy, owning $1.3 million in debt.

Corcoran and Diaz Jr., both former ex officio Board Governors as state education commissioners, together in 2017 co-sponsored legislation to divert $140 million from public school funding to tuition vouchers for private schools.

In 2019, Diaz Jr. sponsored the Family Empowerment Scholarship bill, catalyzing the largest voucher program expansion in the country.

Corcoran, Diaz Jr., and their wives, each had or have personal connections to private for-profit charter schools, programs, tutoring services, curriculum development, and facilitative education technology.

Johnson, Corcoran, and Diaz each held governor-appointed positions Florida Board of Governors.

Vouchers.

Head Start of Dodge County, NE, is operated through Midland University, one of very private, religious institutions in the country to administer public funds for community daycare services.

By virtue of his position as Midland’s president, Sasse was positioned as a director of Dodge County Head Start’s board.

For years, I worked with members of the board of a social services organization that administered state funding for subsidized childcare.

The mayor of the town, a faith leader, owned several daycares which had histories of children going home hurt.

Because of religious exemptions, including from facility safety standards, head count limitations, and required site visits, state agencies could not gain access to diagnose the issues or mandate corrective action.

You can take tuition vouchers for as many children as will fit in your church basement.

Tommy Gregory, former Florida House representative, named president of State College of Florida, Sarasota-Manatee in April of 2024, owns “Raketes,” Greek for “rackets,” which imports three styles of beach paddleball racket from Greece and is not a registered entity in Florida.

For ten years, Gregory has run rackets.

Former House representative Mel Ponder, named president of Northwest Florida State College starting January 2025, continues to operate Business Empowered, LLC, and another LLC called “Business Church.”

Notably, former State Representative Adam Hasner, appointed president of Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in February 2025, has dissolved each of the Florida businesses he previously owned and operated, the last, “Copernicus Concepts, LLC,” a healthcare consulting firm, in 2018.

While running for Florida Senate, Hasner was found to have not paid taxes owed for “Copernicus Concepts, LLC” and a related business, “Dynamic Value, Inc.”

Immediately prior to taking over FAU, Hasner served as executive vice president of the world’s second-largest private prison operator, managing roughly one hundred prisons and facilities averaging nearly one thousand residents per facility.

This agency is contracted with U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) to operate detention facilities, promoting 14 facilities on a page titled “ICE” on their company website.

DeSantis had business, money troubles.

From 2010-2014, Ron DeSantis tried his hand at founding an edtech company with his Harvard Law roommates, “LSAT Freedom,” billed as an affordable online alternative to professional tutors and big-brand study materials.

As the company failed, DeSantis ran for Congress. One of his partners later voluntarily surrendered his law license rather than be disbarred, after attempting to pocket a client settlement and lying to investigators about it.

DeSantis’s 2019 financial disclosures leading into his first days as governor reveal endearing common-man vulnerability, giving context to the fits and indignance—a refreshingly modest net worth for a national politician, student loans, $3,600 in stocks, split evenly between U.S. Steel and Sirius XM, and $263,000 in debt owed to J.G. Wentworth (877 CASH-NOW), presumably to pay back a lump sum paid out for an annuity that dried up or never materialized.

The Governor’s Mansion may have been a port in the storm.

DEI opposition a performance; bad actors.

Wailing and gnashing of teeth at DEI is a performance, a projection, a dismissal, an overwhelming, anxiety-inducing, manipulative, jarring distraction, and a proven tactic.

If instigates voter flight, and repels gaze.

“If they’re seeing red, eyes red and swollen, cloudy by tears, they can’t see clearly to see what we’re up to!”

Colleges campuses house stores of money in the form of contracts, planned and charitable giving, and the top prize, the endowment…sequestered from public records through private LLCs, set up for anonymous investment.

These are not conflicts of interest. These are deliberate convergences of interest.

With two Ivy League degrees and a national profile, DeSantis wouldn’t make his first million until age 45, three years into his first term as governor, when he landed a book deal worth $1.5 million, spiking his personal net worth by 600%.

As DeSantis rails against DEI, he reverse engineers the from the mantra, “go woke, go broke.”

DeSantis was woke, and he was broke.