ORLANDO, Fla. — The biggest conservative political gathering of the year will not return to Orlando after two years, but former President Donald Trump is again set to be the headliner, with no mention so far of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference set for March 1-4, is going back to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center just south of Washington, D.C., where it had been held prior to the pandemic.
The move raises speculation about whether the powerful American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, is taking sides between Trump and DeSantis in a potential GOP presidential primary battle next year.
“(CPAC) may not intentionally be trying to send signals or messages, but the decisions that they make might have some impact on the race, or at least the perception of the race,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.
DeSantis was given rock-star treatment at CPAC in Orlando in 2021 and 2022, both times giving the opening address and welcoming people to “the free state of Florida” after Maryland’s COVID restrictions prompted organizers to move the conference.
The events drew thousands to first the Hyatt Regency Orlando and then the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort, as well as dozens of protesters, scores of reporters, and even a rival event organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
Despite talk from organizers of the event possibly making a permanent home in Orlando, no Florida city was listed as a site for any upcoming CPAC conference. The main conference has been held in late February and early March in recent years, with spinoff events held in Dallas, Hungary and South Korea.
Representatives for CPAC did not respond to questions about whether the main event has permanently moved back to the Washington, D.C., area or if there were plans to hold some type of event in Florida any time soon.
A spokesman for the governor’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.
CPAC rolling out the carpet for Trump and leaving Florida comes after much of the conservative establishment and its largest media outlets gave the former president a muted and even hostile response after he announced his third run for the presidency at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November.
DeSantis, who has received much more favorable coverage from newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the wake of Trump’s latest bid, is widely expected to announce his own run for president later this year.
“In announcing their first speaker as former President Trump, that does elevate him a little bit by suggesting he is the big headline speaker of the event,” Jewett said. “... Is that a diss to DeSantis? Not necessarily, because then you could say, ‘Well, DeSantis is officially not even in the race and Trump is.’ But there’s that underlying subtext you can definitely read into it.”
Trump has continually won presidential straw polls at CPAC events, winning over DeSantis and other potential candidates with 59% of the vote in Orlando last February and 69% of the vote in Dallas in August.
DeSantis, meanwhile, has consistently won the other CPAC straw poll that didn’t include Trump as a candidate, a question that can no longer be asked this year after Trump’s announcement.
“Even when it was in Florida, Trump did win the straw poll, so it will be interesting to see what their straw polls suggest this time,” Jewett said.
DeSantis has already been drawing fire from Trump, widening an already sizable rift between the two over the past two years.
“I got him elected, pure and simple,” Trump said Monday on Real America’s Voice. “And there was no reason to go wild about endorsing him ... So, now I hear he might want to run against me. So, we’ll handle that the way I handle things.”
The governor, meanwhile, has been playing it cool, criticizing the media for asking questions about a Trump-DeSantis race.
Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, was a former adviser in the Trump White House.
A male aide to former Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker sued Schlapp on Tuesday, accusing him of “aggressively fondling” the man’s “genital area in a sustained fashion” in October. A lawyer for Schlapp, Charlie Spies, denied the allegations.
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