An interview with Marco Rubio: ready to take the Senate campaign fight to Charlie Crist
May 18, 2009 at 6:01 am by Mitch Perry
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio
When Marco Rubio declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate earlier this month, he said his campaign wasn’t “against anyone or anything.” On the Spanish language Univision Network, however, his tone was as different as the idiom, saying he was interested in combating “the kind of American Socialism that they want to establish in the U.S.”
Last Friday night in Tampa, I asked the former House speaker, who will compete head to head against Gov. Charlie Crist for the nomination to succeed Mel Martinez in the Senate next year, what exactly did he mean by that?
“The tax plan that the President and the Democratic Congress want this country to adopt is one that will distribute wealth”, he began, energized to discuss a favorite topic. ”One in which more than 50 percent of the country won’t pay income taxes, and were a small bracket will pay more than 60 percent of all taxes. That is distribution of wealth. I don’t think that’s the purpose of the tax system … that’s a socialist concept.”
But Rubio was quick to acknowledge that in fact the U.S. in some ways does run such a system already (as in Social Security and Medicare). He just wants to contain it. “What you learn is that once these things are established, they’re almost impossible to reverse, even if we wanted to …. But what I’m saying is, let’s not repeat those mistakes by increasing to expand these programs. This is not an anti-Democratic (Party) thing. I assure you that many Republicans who have expanded government in pursuit of votes and constituencies, and they’ve both been wrong when they’ve done it.”
Rubio was in Tampa to begin what some are calling a quixotic campaign, but others think is (yes, all together now, say it) a battle for the Heart and Soul of the Republican Party.
Over the weekend, political analysts on shows like “Florida This Week” scoffed at Rubio’s chances against the popular Governor, but discontent with Crist runs strong and surprisingly deep throughout the state, for a variety of reasons.
Cynthia Handley is a former chair of the campaigns for all of the Bushes (Jeb’s three gubernatorial campaigns as well as Presidents 41 and 43 Florida primaries and general elections) over the years in Brevard County. She says she’ll be supporting Marco Rubio in the Senate race, and says everywhere she goes, all she hears is criticism of Charlie Crist.” I’m amazed” she said over the phone last week. “I’m getting a real negative reaction to Charlie Crist when I go to meetings.” After Crist’s embrace of Barack Obama and the economic stimulus package, one Republican in Palm Beach County even called for a censure against the g.
When asked about the ever-ambitious Crist, Rubio seemed pained to express his views, saying blandly that he likes him personally. He admits that in the 2 years they worked together when Rubio was House Speaker “we certainly didn’t agree on a lot.” One issue that Rubio opposes is the governor’s goal to have 20 percent of all the energy produced by the state’s utilities by the year 2020 to come from renewable sources (an idea that died in the Florida House this past session.)
”That proposal is largely full of big government mandates that basically require the government to force power generators today to generate electricity for our homes and business using existing technology … and if you do that, you’re going to do NOTHING, I mean absolutely nothing … there’s nothing Florida can do on its own to impact global climate change or carbon emissions on the planet. But what you WILL do is raise the cost of doing business in the state, and the cost of living here dramatically. This will be a less competitive place to be, a harder place to live at the worst possible time”.
So yes, you can mark him down against the president’s propose cap-and-trade legislation to curb greenhouse gases.
Another obstacle could be the fact that Florida House speakers of late have not lived long and prospered after their service in Tallahassee. Plant City’s Johnny Byrd flamed out famously in his bid for the GOP nomination for Senate in ’04. Orlando’s Tom Feeney enjoyed a few years in Congress but was rejected by the voters last November after stories of political corruption surfaced. And Ray Sansom? Well, let’s just say he’s had his troubles.
And what does Speaker Rubio think of what happened to Speaker Sansom? “It’s unfortunate. Ray Sansom is a friend. I wish none of this would have happened.”
When asked about the fact that several of Samson’s GOP colleagues in the legislature seemed to react more negatively towards the Grand Jury after he was indicted than to Sansom’s behavior, Rubio said he didn’t want to speak too specifically on the charges against Sansom, but acknowledged that he wasn’t ‘a fan’ of putting away money in a budget for specific items. To the extent that there was criticism of a last minute addition to a budget in a conference report, he admitted “there’s come credibility to that criticism, and there’s … some wisdom in changing that process.”
Political reporters in Florida and even across the country are salivating for an intense Primary fight between Rubio and Crist. The State GOP is not. But their heavy-handed tactics of trying to get the party apparatus to support the governor don’t seem to be working.
And that’s a good thing. Rubio’s conservative brand of Republicanism is definitely a striking contrast to the more moderate tone of Governor Crist. You can put Rubio in the category with Dick Cheney that there’s no room for any more moderates, saying, “The more the GOP resembles the Democratic Party, the less need there is for a Republican Party.”
He truly believes that the citizenry will reject the Obama/Congressional Democratic plans for the country, and wants to be in Washington fighting against it.
“If the Republican Party wants to grow and succeed, it must become a voice for those folks. And I’m arguing that we do that. And I’m arguing that any deviation from that makes us less relevant. If enough of them agree with me, I’ll be elected.”
