The four-day, booze-filled  luxury event that is the 2016 Republican National Convention is kicking off today in Cleveland, Ohio.

While the convention has collected approximately $58.5 million from donors for this presidential election year event, it falls short of its fund-raising goal by over $6 million.

Part of the shortfall is due to the intentions of fundraisers such as the Koch brothers, Paul Singer, and corporate donors such as Apple, UPS, Motorola, JP Morgan Chase, Ford, and Wells Fargo to forgo funding and attending this year’s convention.

Cleveland beat out the cities of Cincinnati, Dallas and Denver to hold the Republican convention, that city’s third opportunity to hold the convention for the nominating convention. It is the first convention held in Cleveland since 1936.

Trump, this election cycle’s presumptive Republican nominee, criticized the last convention, held in 2012 in Tampa, Florida, as “the single, most boring convention” he had ever seen, was reported to have been directly involved in the details of the convention plans.[xyz-ihs snippet=”adsense-body-ad”]

But, many of the names that were previously thrown around as speaking participants, such as Sarah Palin, Tim Tebow, and Don King, have declined to speak, or will not attend the convention altogether. Although, fellow contenders for the nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who is expected to run again in 2020, are scheduled to speak, neither contender will “headline” at the convention and Rubio will speak at the convention via video. John Kasich, has announced that he will not even going into the convention being held at the Quicken Loans Arena.

In what was seen as punishment for not backing Trump, Kasich’s Ohio and Cruz’s Texas were assigned seating in the back of the convention.

Past nominees Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush have all decided to skip the convention. Of past nominees, only the 1996 nominee, Bob Dole has stated that he will attend.

Alaska’s Senator, Dan Sullivan, a native of Ohio, was chosen as a speaker at the convention and it is reported that he will take the stage on Tuesday night. Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski announced that she will not be attending and instead will be campaigning in Alaska for her seat which also comes up for election this cycle. Other Representatives, Governors and Senators up for election this cycle are also planning to be absent from the convention in order to distance themselves from Trump, as it is thought attendance would hurt their chances of re-election.

Trump, who originally stated that he would announce his vice presidential pick at the convention, has already done so when he announced Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence last week.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adversal-468×60″]

  cleveland, dan sullivan, pence, republican convention, trump