Donald Trump may have won the Florida primary, but the work isn’t over for presidential hopefuls in the Sunshine State. Florida Republicans are only a few weeks away from selecting the 99 delegates who will represent them at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, but the delegates this year have hardly been set in stone.
The majority of the delegates -- 81 of them -- are selected at the party’s congressional district caucus meetings, which wrap up at the beginning of May. Florida has 27 different congressional districts, each of which get three delegates and three alternates chosen by each county chair, state committeeman and state committeewoman.
Potential delegates have been gathering for nearly two months to put their names in the pool to be one of Florida’s delegates. Hundreds showed up in Miami to be considered for the position.
That means the process for delegate selection is largely determined by the Republican party’s leaders.
“The process that we have at the Republican Party of Florida is transparent and it is decentralized, giving the grassroots a say in who become the delegates,” RPOF chair Blaise Ingoglia told Sunshine State News.
Three of the biggest names in Florida’s Republican scene -- Ingoglia; Sharon Day, RNC co-chair; and Peter Feaman, the national committeeman from Florida -- are automatic delegates.
One of those three automatic delegates -- Ingoglia -- gets to personally make recommendations for the remaining 15 delegates. These are the “at large” delegates who are voted on by the executive board at the party’s spring quarterly meeting in Tampa May 14.
Ingoglia told SSN the competition to be an at large delegate is already fierce. Over 500 people have already put in applications to be considered for a spot.
Ingoglia said he hasn’t reviewed all the applications just yet, but some people are already making their cases to nab a position as an at large delegate.
Ingoglia said the delegates are usually selected three days before they come up for a vote.
Some supporters of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump have accused party officials of shutting them out of the running to be delegates, saying state party officials would rather see another nominee like Ted Cruz go up instead.
Florida’s 99 delegates are required to vote for the state’s primary winner (in this case, Trump) for the first three rounds of voting in a contested convention, but after that, delegates are free to vote for whichever candidate they choose.
Ingoglia denied any possibility of selecting at large delegates based on which candidate they choose if put to a fourth round of votes at a contested convention.
“My recommendation of whatever delegates I put up...we are not I am not going to be looking at a certain ideology or whether that person supports one candidate over another,” he said. “What I’m looking at is someone who has a history of helping out the Republican Party.”
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
