McClatchy Washington Bureau
AP
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WASHINGTON Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican leader, has not been invited to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, two sources familiar with the event’s organizing tell McClatchy.
The annual conference, set to kick off this Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and run through Sunday, will feature speeches by former President Donald Trump, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and more than a half a dozen senators.
But McConnell wasn’t granted an invitation when CPAC organizers began compiling their roster for the four-day gathering last fall. An organizer said the decision was not directly tied to McConnell’s rebukes of Trump in recent weeks in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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For many, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is essentially one of the last major in-person events without masks or coronavirus pandemic restrictions before the shutdown began.
Now, one year later, both the world and CPAC 2021 are very different.
The annual conservative confab has moved from Maryland to Orlando, Florida, due to coronavirus restrictions. It was a very intentional decision to go to Florida, American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp told Fox News. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, U.S., February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque - RC1556BA8460