TAMPA, Fla. – Mitt Romney’s quest to formally win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination is coming two days earlier than expected.

Mr. Romney will be elevated as the party’s standard bearer on Monday – not Wednesday as previously expected – to keep the official business of the roll call delegate vote from competing with broader themes of introducing Mr. Romney. Officials also are keeping an eye on a potential threat from Tropical Storm Isaac and considering concerns about a possible disruption from Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention next week.

It is a change in the script from previous conventions, where the formal nomination usually takes place on the second to last night of the convention. It is a formality, and Mr. Romney will still deliver his acceptance speech on Thursday evening, but the change is significant and an effort to keep the convention focused tightly on Mr. Romney.

“The roll call will take place on Monday,” said Jim Dyke, a convention spokesman, who dismissed suggestions that the schedule had abruptly changed. “We will go through the roll call in alphabetical order all the way through.”

Russ Schriefer, a top strategist for the Romney campaign who is overseeing convention planning, said the roll call vote will be timed for Mr. Romney to formally clinch the nomination when the network news programs begin their broadcasts on Monday evening.

“They can immediately go to Mitt Romney who went over the top in the vote,” Mr. Schriefer said. “We want to get it out of the way and not deal with it on Tuesday or Wednesday.”



The delegates to the convention are staying across the sprawling Tampa Bay area. Convention organizers were concerned that delegates would not be at the convention during the roll call vote, so officials said they decided to compress the vote into a short time period on Monday.

As soon as Mr. Romney officially becomes the party’s presidential nominee, he can have access to the general election money he has spent months raising, which puts him on the cusp of tapping into a significant financial advantage for the final two months of the race. Mr. Schriefer said that Mr. Romney would not begin accepting general election money until Thursday.

But next week’s schedule, according to discussions among party officials here, has as much to do with a desire to keep an orderly convention as it does with Isaac, the storm expected to develop into a hurricane as it moves toward Florida. The campaign had hoped that the television networks would cover the convention on Monday because Ann Romney is delivering her marquee speech that night, but so far the networks have declined. She is also expected to speak later in the week.

Some supporters of Mr. Paul also have been pushing to make their voices heard during the roll call vote. Mr. Paul, the libertarian Texas congressman whose presidential bid fell short, won a majority of delegates from Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada, but not enough state delegations to require that his name be placed into nomination.

While Mr. Paul’s advisers have worked behind the scenes with the Romney campaign for months, several supporters have signaled their interest in making their admiration known for Mr. Paul on the convention floor. The Romney campaign has worked through most of the concerns, but still preferred officially calling the roll of delegates on Monday, when television networks were not planning to broadcast the convention to diminish the potential for any fireworks.

Several Republican officials said scheduling the roll call on Monday allowed Mr. Romney to avoid drawing attention to two potential problems: from Mr. Paul’s supporters and the winds and rain of Isaac. By the time Mr. Romney arrives here in Tampa, aides hope both challenges will have blown over.