Oxon Hill, Md.: The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once one of the premier gatherings on the GOP campaign calendar — a must-stop for serious contenders testing the waters on presidential runs.
No longer.
Many of the party’s best-known likely candidates — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former Vice President Mike Pence — are skipping the marquee event kicking off Wednesday as the group grapples with controversy and questions over its place in a movement that remains deeply split over its allegiance to former President Donald Trump.
Adding to the turmoil: A lawsuit filed by an unnamed Republican campaign staffer against Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference. The suit accuses Schlapp of groping him during a car ride in Georgia before the November election. Schlapp has denied the allegations.
“I don’t think people go there to meet the next generation of leaders. They go to celebrate the last one,” said Alex Conant, a longtime GOP strategist who remembers attending his first CPAC as a high school student in the 1990s and being star-struck meeting Newt Gingrich, the Georgia congressman who had just stepped down as House speaker.
This year, Trump has top billing, delivering the conference’s headlining speech Saturday evening. He is almost guaranteed to win the event’s annual unscientific presidential preference poll of attendees.
Also on the schedule are the two other declared Republican candidates: Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is also mulling a White House run, is set to speak. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida will appear. Both have recently signaled their intentions to run for reelection instead of vying for the nomination.
The conference schedule features a litany of election deniers who reject findings from judges, election officials and Trump’s own attorney general that there was no widespread fraud during the 2020 campaign. They include Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder who continues to spread election conspiracy theories, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Kari Lake, the news anchor-turned Arizona gubernatorial candidate who refused to concede after losing last year, will speak Friday night.
