Tag Archives: Marco Rubio

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Marco Rubio wins Florida Senate race – first tea party senator!

Florida Senator Marco Rubio
Florida Senator Marco Rubio

Here’s the story on Marco Rubio’s landslide victory in the Florida Senate race.

Excerpt:

MARCO RUBIO, REPUBLICAN

An attorney, the 39-year-old Miami native served as speaker of the Florida House and became a rising star in the GOP as a fiscal conservative.

Born to Cuban immigrants, Rubio began his career in public service as a city commissioner in West Miami and entered the Florida House at age 29. Within eight years he ascended from a representative seated by special election to majority whip, majority leader and eventually House speaker.

Fiscal conservatism is the cornerstone of Rubio’s philosophy. He says controlling the national debt and paring government entitlement programs are the most important things lawmakers can accomplish. Rubio wants to reinstate tax cuts for the wealthy enacted under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, slash corporate taxes and eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividend profits. He also supports eliminating the estate tax.

In the Republican primary for the Senate, Rubio initially trailed Gov. Charlie Crist by 30 points. The national GOP quickly embraced Crist, but Rubio overtook him with substantial tea party support. Twice he set records for the most lucrative three-month fundraising periods for a Senate race in Florida, collecting $4.5 million and $5 million, respectively. Crist, meanwhile, turned to a bid as an independent.

Rubio lives in West Miami with his wife, Jeanette, and four children.

Now, we finally get to remove the “to-be” from his blogroll entry which I put there the day he announced he was running for Senate. Mr. Rubio is 39 years old. He’s a star now, and he’s going to go far!

Another tea party senator also won in Kentucky – Rand Paul.

Excerpt:

KENTUCKY:

RAND PAUL, REPUBLICAN

The 47-year-old eye doctor tapped into tea party fervor with a fiercely antiestablishment message. He has strong family ties to politics — his father is Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a former presidential candidate and libertarian icon.

Quiet and intense, Rand Paul railed against government bailouts and deficit spending in promoting low taxes and limited government. He’s also personally frugal, according to friends who say he mows the lawn at his home in a gated community and shops the Internet for cheap golf shoes.

Paul was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Texas and settled in Bowling Green, a college town near his wife’s hometown, about 20 years ago. He runs his own ophthalmology practice.

Paul attended Baylor University but left early without a bachelor’s degree for medical school at Duke University. He helped create a certification group for ophthalmologists after objecting to a powerful medical group’s policy.

Paul and his wife, Kelley, have three sons. He has coached youth baseball, soccer and basketball, and his family attends a Presbyterian church, where his wife is a deacon.

He’s only 47 years old!

We also have more new senators in Ohio (Rob Portman), Pennsylvania (Pat Toomey), New Hampshire (Kelly Ayotte), Indiana (Dan Coats), Wisconsin (Ron Johnson), North Dakota (John Hoeven).

Latest FL Senate poll – Rubio 40, Crist 32, Meek 17

FL Senate candidate Marco Rubio

Yahoo! Poll is here.

Excerpt:

Democrats will get their stronger candidate if Kendrick Meek wins the Florida Senate primary tonight as expected- but the biggest winner coming out of the primary may be Marco Rubio. PPP finds he would begin the general election in the lead at 40%, followed by Charlie Crist at 32%, and Meek at 17%.

[…]PPP’s last poll of the race in mid-July found Crist in the lead at 35% to 29% for Rubio and 17% for Meek. Two major developments have shifted the race in Rubio’s direction though. The first is that Democrats are now going for Meek 39-38 where before they were going for Crist 44-35. As Democrats have gotten to know Meek over the course of the primary campaign they’ve generally decided they like him and that’s cut into Crist’s support for the general election.

The other big difference is that many Republican voters have moved off the fence and they’ve almost universally moved into the Rubio column. Where Rubio had a 54-23 lead with GOP voters in July, it’s now increased to 69-20. Many Republicans were up in the air between Crist and Rubio previously but whatever they’ve seen over the last month has moved them more firmly into the Rubio column.

It’s not just that Rubio is a perfect candidate, it’s that Crist needs to be defeated.

UPDATE:

Oh, he’s got a fundraiser going on right now! They already hit their goal way before the deadline, but they just raised the goal! People are crazy about this guy.