Fla. delegate brags about LeBron’s Heat titles at RNC in Cleveland
Roll-call votes to nominate presidential candidates give delegates the opportunity to puff out their chests and brag about their home states/territories. During Tuesday’s roll call at the 2016 Republican National Convention, though, one delegate used his platform not only to big up his home turf, but also to offer a bit of sports-themed knife-twisting to hoop fans in the host city of Cleveland.
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When Florida State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia — the “minor YouTube celebrity, minor real estate mogul, motivational speaker, and tournament poker player” who serves as chairman of Florida’s Republican Party — stepped to the microphone at Quicken Loans Arena to pledge all of his state’s 99 Republican delegates to formal nominee Donald Trump, he began with a boisterous but fairly standard collection of self-high-fiving, according to Ledyard King of the Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press:
Ingoglia spoke of Florida as the home of Disney World, the Daytona 500 and the “stunning” Florida Keys.
“We have no state income tax and our residents enjoy over 600 miles of pristine beaches. Florida is the paradise where you vacation but (where) we all live. We are home to over 1.5 million veterans and we make to a point to thank them every day,” he said.
And then Ingoglia got to smirkin’.
“We are the state that gave LeBron James his first two championships,” Ingoglia said, much to the delight of the folks arrayed behind him … though the remarks seemed to meet with a more mixed reaction outside his immediate vicinity:
Home state is up- Florida saying what matters “We gave Lebron James his first two championships and no income tax!” pic.twitter.com/l6n3qge9Bu
— Eyvana (@Eyvana) July 19, 2016
Not necessarily full-fledged boos, but certainly a bit of a, “Wait, did he just decide to throw some shade about how LeBron left Ohio for Miami even after LeBron came back to Ohio and beat the best regular-season team of all time to win the Cavs’ first championship ever?” Which might not be quite as large a faux pas as House Speaker Paul Ryan kicking off the RNC by waving a Terrible Towel in the heart of Browns country — as it turns out, Ryan’s got his sporting enthusiasm wires crossed more than a bit — but is still, y’know, a pretty fair question!
(And, while we’re here, there’s quite a bit of room for debate about whether The State Of Florida “gave” LeBron two championships, or whether he was actually the most important contributor to the effort that “gave” those rings to the Heat and their fans. Instead of having that debate, though, I’m just going to put on LeBron’s #tealizard hat.)
It is also, evidently, not the first time Ingoglia’s raised eyebrows with a public comment made in the middle of a Republican gathering. From a 2008 piece in the Tampa Bay Times about some discomfort with the prospect of Ingoglia, at the time not yet an elected official, serving as a master of ceremonies at a local Republican party “Unity Rally”:
His presence prompted the county’s most prominent African-American Republican to consider boycotting the rally. Paul Douglas is upset after Ingoglia told a racially insensitive joke about Barack Obama at an event on primary election night at the local GOP headquarters.
Ingoglia stood up in the middle of the room, Douglas said, and asked the approximately 25 people in the crowd which president appeared on the $1 bill, the $50 bill and the $100 bill. The crowd answered.
Then Ingoglia asked where Obama’s face would appear if he was elected president. The punch line: “On food stamps.”
Douglas, a staunch Republican who favors Obama in the presidential election, said the joke seemed to make the entire group uncomfortable. […]
Ingoglia said he meant the joke as a criticism of Obama’s tax policies.
This, at least, seemed to go over better than that.
Slate ranked Ingoglia’s LeBron-capped brags the eighth-best among RNC delegates, trailing Alaska, Arkansas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Rhode Island (which broke new ground by “bragging” about how bad things are there, thanks to Democrats), Minnesota and Connecticut, “the home of the WWE, where men are men and the women are champions.” As if we needed the RNC to offer another reminder that everything is wrestling now.
Hat-tip to Hector Diaz of SB Nation.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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