Another Tinder user I talked to, Marcus C., a 25-year-old grad student from Pittsburgh who came to meet me wearing a salmon blazer, said that hooking up wasn’t the reason he came, but it was “in the back of my mind...if it happens, it happens.”

He then tried to make it happen. As we chatted over drinks at Public House, a sports bar across from the hotel, he brought up House of Cards, which had been released that day and was lighting up the politico crowd. (On Yik Yak, a location-based app kids use to gossip anonymously, one attendee had posted an “open invitation”: “House of Cards season 4 is on Netflix. Come Netflix and chill with me.”) I told him I used to watch it but stopped when Zoe, the up-and-coming young reporter who sleeps with a congressman to get scoops, got pushed into the path of an oncoming train.

“Do you see yourself as a Zoe?” he asked, a glint of hope in his voice.

I told him, No, I don’t sleep with my sources. He wasn’t deterred, and sent me another message later that night that shall remain off the record.

At the conference during the day—between broadsides on Donald Trump’s faux conservatism from Senator Ted Cruz and panels like “Never Lose a Debate With a Global Warming Alarmist: Learn Why Scientists Disagree About the Climate”—most of the people I approached looked at me aghast, offended that I’d suggested they’d come for anything other than Ben Carson’s dulcet, meandering speech about lizards.

In the exhibition hall, I chatted with Craig Knight, the founder of the dating website ConservativesOnly.com (tagline: “Because Liberals Just Don’t Get It”), which had 3,000 members when I spoke with him. Although he’s single, he wasn’t looking to mix business and pleasure. “I don’t really have the time to mingle while I’m trying to promote this business,” he told me.

Unsurprisingly, attendees were more candid after hours. Chris B., a 22-year-old from Indiana, told me he’d invited two girls up to his hotel room to “see a congressman speak.” (I’ve heard that one before, Chris!) Michael F., a 21-year-old from North Carolina who recently broke up with his girlfriend and was garbed in both a Make America Great Again hat and a Make America Great Again shirt, was optimistic about the possibility of finding someone. “You’re meeting like-minded individuals who are the same age,” he shouted over a blaring live rendition of “I Will Survive” at a piano bar near the hotel. “It’s, like, great! I mean, it’s perfect!”

“If you like Trump, then fuck you,” Jon B., a 21-year-old junior at the University of Delaware, told me. But would he hook up with a Trump supporter? Only “if she’s really hot.”

Some guys I talked to didn’t believe that I wasn’t looking for love myself. At the piano bar, David P., a 24-year-old from Long Island, dubiously eyed me up: “Is this your way of asking me out?” My case wore thin during another interview there, when, as one guy typed his e-mail address into my phone, a Tinder notification popped up. I wouldn’t have believed my “It’s for the story!” defense, either.

And yet another attendee, upon hearing that I was (1) unmarried, and (2) Jewish, asked if he could take me to dinner. When I replied, No, thanks, this was just for a story, and I have a boyfriend, he told me that this boyfriend needed to put a ring on it. The next day, I took his advice. From my stash of costume-y jewelry, I unearthed a silver ring with a plastic gem that could, at a glance, pass for an engagement ring and slipped it on before I interviewed guys. It generally worked: The GOP strategist asked how my husband was handling my immersion reportage. “I don’t think he’s thrilled,” I said of my boyfriend, who wasn’t.

It was the politico’s tenth CPAC, and while he wasn’t there solely to “fuck the shit out of” his Republican comrades, he made an effort to dress well. “I always try to have a new suit, or have one made,” he said. “I try to peacock around a bit.”