The Republican Party of Florida will be holding its Spring Quarterly meeting Friday and Saturday in Tampa.
The meeting will feature an array of meetings and seminars, including an overview of the 2016 legislative session by Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland and Speaker Pro Tempore Matt Hudson, R-Naples.
Special guests at the spring meeting will include the Google U.S. Elections Team, which will make a special presentation to the party's digital engagement committee.
Former United States Secret Service agent Dan Bongino will headline the party's breakfast Saturday morning. Bongino was the Republican Party's nominee for Maryland's 6th Congressional district in 2014, but lost out to the Democratic nominee.
Perhaps the most important event to happen at the two-day meeting will be the party's selection of the 15 at-large delegates who will represent Florida at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.
As Sunshine State News previously reported, over 600 party members from around the state had submitted their names for consideration to represent the Sunshine State to vote for the party's presidential nominee.
Those 600 applicants will be whittled down to 15 potential delegates hand-selected by RPOF party chair Blaise Ingoglia.
Ingoglia will make his recommendations to the RPOF's Executive Board on Saturday. Once the Board votes on the candidates, they will join the 84 other candidates to head the Florida delegation in Cleveland.
Only three delegates -- the RPOF chair (Ingoglia), RNC Chair Sharon Day, and state committeeman Peter Feaman are automatic delegates. After the 15 at-large delegates, the 81 remaining delegates have been selected at the Congressional district level from each of Florida's 27 districts. Each district gets three delegates and three alternates.
“With the tremendous gains the Florida GOP has already made this year, our quarterly meeting will serve to continue building our state party as a turnkey organization," said Ingoglia.
Each RPOF meeting usually gathers a wide variety of top state Republicans rubbing shoulders with some of their closest allies in an important election year.
The spring quarterly meeting will be held Friday and Saturday at the DoubleTree Hotel in Tampa. Sunshine State News will cover the meeting both Friday and Saturday.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
