It’s only March and the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) is already having a difficult year. CPAC has returned to Washington, D.C., minus some of its biggest sponsors and speakers from previous years. And they won’t be coming back.

Fox Nation, which blew a sizable $250,000 on last year’s conference, will be noticeably absent. Donald Trump and his $125,000-level sponsor PAC will be there, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) won’t be. Nikki Haley will be a featured speaker but Mike Pence will be absent, as he has been for the last three years, Semafor reports.

Last week CPAC offered congressional staffers $50 tickets, a discount of $245 from the general admission price. Despite this, some of the host hotel’s 2,000 rooms were available on Wednesday. Some CPAC attendees received calls about last-minute tickets for the Ronald Reagan Dinner, where former Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake will be the keynote speaker (and probably still insists she’s the actual governor even though she’s clearly not).

The tickets for this pricey dinner were still available as of Wednesday, selling for $375 each.

Some of those who attend the conference clearly feel Lake is not worth the price of admission.

“Seventy-two hours out, it is weird to be getting phone bank-style calls begging me to buy an insanely overpriced ticket for a dinner with a speaker that clearly nobody cares to hear to speak,” GOP strategist Dennis Lennox, who has been attending CPAC yearly since 2007.

Then there’s the Matt Schlapp drama that’s still unfolding. Schlapp, president of the American Conservative Union, was accused in January of groping an employee of Herschel Walker’s failed Georgia Senate campaign. He’s denied these allegations in court, but this has made some past CPAC attendees become more cautious about attending this year.

Schlapp initially told Semafor on Monday that he would be able to discuss CPAC Tuesday. But then The Washington Post published the story revealing the Walker staffer’s allegation and noted other complaints about Schlapp’s behavior over his years of being a conservative. After the revelations, he didn’t respond to texts and emails.

This didn’t result in a CPAC speaker exodus due to the lawsuit against Schlapp, and sponsorship deals were worked out before the lawsuit was filed. However, the sponsor list shows an obvious shift in who’s paying for exposure at the four-day event. Some prominent conservative organizations pulled out and were replaced by more obscure organizations.

Other notable groups will be absent this year as well, including the Republican National Committee, which was a $125,000 sponsor during the 2022 conference. People familiar with the decision say this is because the deadline for sponsorship passed before Ronna McDaniel was reelected, and the party didn’t want to make a commitment before the race was settled. And GETTR, a conservative social media network founded by Jason Miller, a Trump strategist was a $75,000 sponsor last year but won’t be returning this year. Miller left the company in February to rejoin Trump.

Well, what can I say? I guess one good disease deserves another. That’s my thoughts on Trump and Miller in a nutshell.

Other typically high-level sponsors have been rocked by their own controversies and have backed out. This includes Liberty HealthShare. The company had been buying CPAC’s top sponsorship package for years, but now it’s facing heavy scrutiny for not paying the bills of people who relied on it for it. Project Veritas, a frequent sponsor, will be a no-show this year due to turmoil created during the ouster of founder James O’Keefe. He’ll be a speaker at the conference but Project Veritas won’t be on hand.

But hey, an anti-CCP group, the New Federal State of China, created by Steve Bannon, will be there. Bannon will hold forth on the main stage, and his group is a $75,000 supporter of the conference.

Obviously, CPAC is undergoing numerous changes, but with Schlapp’s alleged shenanigans and fringe elements like Bannon and Lake making appearances, it pretty much looks like things are going downhill from here.