News from the Sarah Palin Events Calendar...

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Salina, Kansas is getting ready for Sarah Palin:

About 6,000 people will gather to hear former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin speak at Salina's Chamber of Commerce Banquet. But before then, the city has a lot of preparing to do.

Bicentennial workers put up new signs and touch up paint to get ready for one of the biggest events this center has ever seen.

"My staff is just a buzz about Sarah Palin," said Bicentennial Center Manager Marshall Perry.

The former Alaska Governor comes on Friday as the keynote speaker for the Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet. Almost all the seats will be filled in addition to the 176 tables that cover the floor.

Meanwhile, in Daytona Beach, Florida, the location for Gov. Palin's speech had to be changed to a larger venue:

The chamber is moving the dinner from the Hilton Oceanfront hotel to the Ocean Center, a convention destination.

Ticket sales to date are 64 percent higher than last year's sales.

The governor will return to Kansas for a Wichita fundraiser in May:

Are local Republicans excited that Sarah Palin is coming to Wichita?

You betcha.

"She obviously is going to draw a big crowd," said John Stevens, president of the Wichita Pachyderm Club. "She speaks for an element of folks who feel like they haven't gotten a lot of representation lately. I think she's a good person whether you agree with all her views or not."

The former Alaska governor has agreed to come to Wichita to speak at a May 2 fundraiser for Bethel Life School, a Christian school serving prekindergarten through eighth grade.

Following a private reception with major donors, she'll make a public appearance at Intrust Bank Arena beginning at 7 p.m.

The 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate will headline a Center for Arizona Policy event in Glendale, AZ in April:

Palin will be the keynote speaker at a CAP dinner April 24 at the Glendale Renaissance Hotel & Spa, according to CAP President Cathi Herrod. The socially conservative group led the 2008 state ballot measure banning same-sex marriages.

She will be going to Alabama in the fall:

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will speak at Faulkner University's 2010 annual Benefit Dinner in October.

The event is at 7 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa at the Conven tion Center. Tickets for the event are $150 each and include a meal at the Renaissance. They go on sale Feb. 15. Sponsorships for the event begin at $1,000.

In addition, in her recent USA Today op-ed, Sarah palin annnounced that in addition to Saturday's keynote speech to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, she will speak at two Tea party Express events. One will be in Harry Reid's home town of Searchlight, Nevada:

The March 27 Nevada event will kick off the Tea Party Express's 42-city bus tour, which will end April 15 with what organizers are billing as a major march on Washington.

And the other, an April event, is scheduled for the city where the first American tea party demonstration was held -- Boston, Massachusetts:

Mark Williams, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express group, which is planning an April 14 event in Boston, said Palin would be the headliner of the event. He said he wasn't sure if the venue had been decided on yet.

He said he hoped that Republican Scott Brown, who last month won a special election for the US Senate in Massachusetts, would also attend. "I think we've probably reached out to him," he said.

He said the group had no qualms about staging an event in one of the nation's most liberal states.

"It's a working stiff state that's neither blue nor red," he said.

- JP