 Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. |
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Monday he’s running for the nation’s highest office and will formally declare his presidential candidacy in a speech from Miami.
Rubio indicated his run during a conference call with donors, saying he’s “uniquely qualified” to represent the Republican Party and painting the 2016 race as one between the past and the present.
He’s entering a field that some are already saying is crowded. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was first to announce, followed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. In the wings are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and millionaire businessman Donald Trump.
His announced intent to announce a campaign also comes a day after Hillary Clinton jumped in the Democratic Party’s race.
Not all are enamored with Rubio.
Tea-party types from his home state say they’ve moved beyond the Rubio wagon and are looking for a new candidate to support.
“I’m through with him,” said KrisAnne Hall, a tea-party activist and attorney from Florida, the Daily Beast reported. “He will never get my vote. … The overwhelming perception is that Marco Rubio is not a tea-party candidate.”
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Another, Jason Hoyt, spoke similarly.
“Once he got into Washington, he had his sights set early on higher office,” he said. “He surrounded himself with people who were going to help him navigate Washington … and in that process, he disconnected from his base.”
Rubio’s not popular with hard-core immigration activists, either.
He was part of the bipartisan so-called Gang of Eight on Capitol Hill to reform immigration policy and press forward some amnesty allowances – a view many of his supporters decried as as betrayal of his conservative roots and stated platforms.
 Marco Rubio, bottom left, shown as a teenager wearing No. 46 for the South Miami High Cobras |
Meanwhile, others contend Rubio’s not even a natural-born citizen and therefore, ineligible to seek the presidency. Rubio’s parents, as WND previously reported on at least two occasions, were not U.S. citizens at the time of his birth.
Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, on May 28, 1971, to Mario and Oriales Rubio, who were born in Cuba, though the senator has not released his birth certificate for the world to scrutinize.
As WND reported in 2011, Rubio press secretary Alex Burgos said the senator’s parents “were permanent legal residents of the U.S.” at the time Marco was born in 1971.
Then four years after Marco was born, “Mario and Oriales Rubio became naturalized U.S. citizens on Nov. 5, 1975,” Burgos told WND.
When asked specifically if Rubio considered himself to be a natural-born citizen, Burgos responded, “Yes.”
Though Rubio was born in Florida, his parents are natives of Havana who came to the U.S. in 1959 after Fidel Castro’s communist takeover of the island nation. After a brief stay in New York, the family settled in Miami. According to Rubio’s official online biography, at the age of 8, the entire family moved to Las Vegas, where Marco’s father worked as a bartender and his mother as a hotel housekeeper.
The family returned to Miami in 1985, and Marco became a football player at South Miami High School.
“It’s no secret that Marco wants to be the first Cuban-American president,” said state Sen. Steve Geller, the top Democrat in the Florida Senate when Rubio was House speaker.
“He’s smart, he’s ambitious, and, candidly, I wouldn’t want to be the guy that gets in his way. Because you’ll regret it.”
