Peter Schorsch
So much for Blaise’s Blunder…
After a few hiccups and a barrage of negative attention from Florida’s political media, namely the Tampa Bay Times’ Adam Smith and, to a lesser extent, POLITICO Florida’s Marc Caputo, the Florida GOP’s Sunshine Summit will see at least twelve presidential candidates attend the event, while the Summit’s overall importance continues to increase as Florida becomes more competitive — and a more attractive prize — in the 2016 GOP primary.
Last week, it was announced that Carly Fiorina and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz plan to attend the Summit, leaving only Palm Beach’s Ben Carson as the only major candidate not to commit to being at the debate.
Trump, Bush, and Rubio will be there, oh my!
For a moment there, it did not look as if the Summit would be the blockbuster event it is shaping up to be. Ridiculously, Smith and Co. framed RPOF Chairman Blaise Ignoglia’s efforts as an ‘extortion’ effort to raise money for the party by linking candidate ballot access to participation in the event.
Lost in this coverage is the fact that Smith and the Times have basically had it out for Ignoglia since before he was elected to the Florida House. The Hernando Times — the Times offshoot in that county — has had an ax to grind against Ignoglia for years and that bias eventually seeped into the rest of the newspaper’s coverage. Smith couldn’t resist snarking about Ignoglia’s otherwise successful run as a professional poker player.
Ingoglia has remained a target of the Times/Herald since taking over as Chairman. Just yesterday, the Herald’s Mary Ellen Klas reported the RPOF is in a fundraising “slump,” without putting any of the party’s latest fundraising numbers in believable context. Ignoglia isn’t even getting credit for not taking a salary!
Nevermind, says Ignoglia, whose overarching goal for the Summit is to keep Florida relevant in the presidential race.
No, the Summit won’t have a straw poll as previous confabs (the Presidency series) held. Sure, the process to get the Summit where it is now at has been bumpy (if Ignoglia had just rolled out a press release announcing the Summit with 12 candidates scheduled, he would probably have avoided most of the negative coverage). But the reality is the Sunshine Summit is a reality. It’s less than a month away, in fact.
Ingoglia’s job is not to please the media. His job is not to please the presidential candidates, including those with deep Florida roots. His job is to keep/make the Florida GOP a relevant part of the 2016 election cycle. His job is to win elections.
With his Summit, Chairman Ingoglia has succeeded in the face of disproportionately unfair criticism.
