Over the holiday weekend, Marco Rubio upgraded his odds of seeking re-election from "unlikely" to "maybe"—at least, if his "real good friend," Florida Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, weren't already running for the GOP nod. Said Rubio of CLC, "I think he's put in time and energy to it and he deserves the chance to see where he can take it," and perhaps he means it: Rubio held a previously scheduled conference call with Lopez-Cantera donors on Friday rather than beg off, which you might have expected him to do if he were really interested in perpetuating his Senate career.
Lopez-Cantera is also making a show of staying put, though his campaign's comments weren't exactly emphatic. Said a spokesperson, "Senator Rubio has been supportive of Lopez-Cantera's candidacy. I'll let that speak for itself." But it's really not CLC that Rubio would have to worry about. There are four other Republicans in the race, and at least two of them sound a lot more determined to hang tough.
In response to this latest round of chatter about Rubio, wealthy businessman Carlos Beruff offered what has to be regarded as a reverse Shermanesque statement, insisting through a spokesman that he's "staying in this race no matter what." Beruff followed that up by releasing an internal poll from OnMessage showing him with a 17-16 edge on Rep. David Jolly, who'd led in pretty much every other poll of the GOP primary to date.
Beruff's survey didn't directly mention You Know Who, but OnMessage did reference Rubio in a memo. The pollsters declared that the results of Florida's March presidential primary, when Donald Trump stomped "Little Marco" by a 46-27 margin, were "no fluke" and showed that voters are "demanding new leaders from outside of the political ranks." Hey, that sure sounds like Carlos Beruff, don't it?
Or maybe that sounds like Todd Wilcox, another self-funding businessman with no political experience, who offered even sharper comments. Said Wilcox, "I have no intention of leaving this race just because another career politician gets in, especially one who fought for amnesty for illegals ..." However, Wilcox has barely registered in the polls (he was at just 5 percent in Beruff's), precisely because he is an unknown outsider, and unlike Beruff, he hasn't spent millions on the airwaves (at least, not yet).
That leaves two others. Jolly, the one-time frontrunner for the Republican nomination, quickly made it clear that he would defer to the Sunshine State's junior senator, saying that if Rubio were to run for a second term, he "would withdraw from the Senate race and support Rubio for re-election." Jolly, at least, could also run for re-election himself in that scenario, since no legitimate GOP contenders have stepped up in the 13th Congressional District (and he's the only one who could keep the race close with former Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist in this newly redistricted seat).
But it wouldn't be quite so easy for the final candidate, Rep. Ron DeSantis, to drop out, because at least four plausible Republicans are running to replace him in the 6th District. What's more, two of those candidates are state representatives, so they would have to try to bump out whichever peeps are already running for their legislative seats—a really messy game of political dominoes, in other words.
Yet despite these obstacles, DeSantis offered remarks that sounded a lot more like Lopez-Cantera's, with his campaign manager meekly saying, "We're focused on continuing to run the strongest campaign of any candidate in Florida." DeSantis, though, has the support of the Club for Growth, and there's no real obvious alternative for them if he bails, though Beruff does have a reputation as an anti-tax crusader. However, Beruff’s also a Trumpian nativist even though both of his parents were born in Cuba, so that would definitely not appeal to the Club. (For what it's worth, DeSantis clocked in at 9 percent in Beruff's poll, while CLC took a pitiful 3.)
And it's not just the possibility of a contested primary, which would be embarrassing in its own right for a sitting senator, that could keep Rubio out. Rubio himself would bring considerable weaknesses to the race, such as his well-publicized flip flop on immigration reform and the fact that he spoke so disdainfully of his Senate service during his presidential run. And as Rubio’s devastating loss to Trump demonstrated, Rubio has a lot of enemies in Florida GOP politics. Rubio has a habit of discarding people after he’s decided that he doesn’t need them anymore; if he were to make an about-face, he’d suddenly need some of those former allies once more, and they may not be interested in forgiving him.
Yet despite Rubio's manifest flaws, national Republicans are convinced that he'd have to be better than the current crop of alternatives. And with Mitch McConnell's fragile Senate majority on the line, he's begging Rubio to change course, saying, "We're doing everything we can to encourage him to run." The Senate Leadership Fund, a well-funded PAC allied with McConnell, is being even less subtle. The group’s head said that they’d back Rubio if he got in, but warned that “right now, it’s hard to imagine making that same investment without him as our candidate.” In other words, McConnell’s allies want Rubio to know that they think he’s the only guy who can keep this critical seat red. Amusingly, Donald Trump is making a similar argument, though we're guessing that the support of the guy who eviscerated Rubio in his home state isn't exactly going to provide much inspiration.
But here's one final reason why Rubio might ignore these pleas: He could very well lose. While he'd probably be the favorite in the GOP primary, a general election battle with Rep. Patrick Murphy, the leading Democrat, would be a tossup, especially with Trump firing up Latino voters as never before. And if Murphy were to beat Rubio, he'd simply have to dispel with any hopes that he might run for president again someday.