Just last Thursday, Marco Rubio’s campaign said it would need a few weeks before releasing records of his spending on a Republican Party of Florida American Express card during his time in the state legislature. But apparently the heat got to them, because here it is, Monday, and they’ve released those records:
In all, his campaign said on Saturday, Mr. Rubio spent $182,072 on the card from January 2005 through December 2008, of which 12 percent, or $22,003, was personal and was paid to American Express directly by him.
But those payments were routinely late — 21 times over the course of those four years — sometimes because he did not pay on time, and sometimes because the Republican Party fell behind. The account, which was listed under his name, was assessed delinquency charges seven times, adding up to $1,639.47.
Personal charges included $10,000 for a trip to a family reunion and $3,756 for paving stones at his home, as well as $599.45 at a Honda dealership. At the time, Rubio was not only earning a salary as a state legislator but as a lawyer, with his lawyer salary rising dramatically as he rose from freshman representative to speaker of the state House—by 2005, he was earning $300,000 a year as a lawyer, up from $72,000 a year five years earlier when he was first elected.
Rubio was dealing with several pots of money—his own salaries from the state and a law firm, his campaign and his political action committees, and the state Republican Party—and he doesn’t seem to have been very good at keeping them separate, noticing what credit card he was pulling out for what expense, or even whether he was double-billing plane flights to both the state and the Republican Party. He wants to turn this story to his advantage as a man of the people who didn’t have family money coming up, but most of us who aren’t rising political stars don’t go from making $72,000 to $300,000 over five years, while also drawing a state salary and not noticing that we’re using a Republican Party AmEx to go to a family reunion.