Monday, April 13, 2015

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Marco Rubio Announces 2016 Presidential Bid - New York Times




Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, in February. At 43, he is the youngest candidate in the growing 2016 presidential field. Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

MIAMI — Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told his top donors Monday that he is running for president in 2016, becoming the third Republican to officially enter the contest.


Mr. Rubio will make a formal announcement Monday evening here in which he is expected to present himself as the embodiment of generational change who can unite the Republican Party’s factions and offer economic solutions for the 21st century.


At 43, the youngest candidate in the rapidly growing 2016 presidential field, Mr. Rubio is expected to cast himself as a forward-looking, next-generation leader — and an implicit contrast with both Jeb Bush, 62, whose family has dominated Republican politics for nearly three decades, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, 67, the wife of a former president and the likely Democratic nominee.



At a breakfast for bundlers of donations to his campaign on Monday at the Marriott Biscayne Bay, Mr. Rubio said that people were eager to look to the future, and described “one candidate in the race who’s from yesterday and who wants to take us back to yesterday,” one attendee said afterward.






Paths to the Presidency: What Marco Rubio Would Need to Do to Win


Mr. Rubio joins his Senate colleagues Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who both have announced their candidacies. Other Republican hopefuls, including Mr. Bush and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are also preparing to officially enter the race.


Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, was on a road trip to Iowa on Monday after announcing her second bid for the Democratic nomination in a videotaped message released on Sunday afternoon.


Mr. Rubio is expected to campaign on themes that emphasize American greatness and the American dream, an optimistic, aspirational message that he outlined in his newly released book, “American Dreams.”


He is also angling to become the youthful face of a party that skews older and has struggled to attract young voters, blacks and Hispanics. Many mainstream Republicans hope that a Cuban-American who speaks fluent Spanish can help draw Hispanic voters, a growing demographic that will be critical during the general election, into the party.






Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?


Mr. Rubio served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000 to 2008, eventually becoming speaker. He was elected to the Senate in 2010 and has said he would not run for re-election if he ran for president.


Among the Republican Party’s announced and expected candidates, Mr. Rubio occupies a middle ground, which is both an asset and an obstacle. He hopes to appeal to more moderate Republicans as well as to social, fiscal and foreign policy voters, but he could also find himself without a clear constituency, especially in the first four nominating states.


Mr. Rubio has credibility with the conservative grass roots after defeating both a Democrat and Charlie Crist, a moderate former Republican governor, in his Senate race, but he offers a less hard-line message than Republicans like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Walker.


As a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, Mr. Rubio has used his time in the Senate to position himself as a hawk, a stark contrast with Mr. Paul, who prefers a more restrained approach to military intervention. After his announcement here, Mr. Rubio plans to fly back to Washington to attend a Foreign Relations committee meeting on legislation that would require Congress to weigh in on any nuclear deal President Obama reaches with Iran.



But his work on immigration — one of his biggest achievements in the Senate — illustrates the delicate balance Mr. Rubio will have to strike to make it through his party’s nominating process. In 2013, Mr. Rubio was part of a bipartisan group of senators that drafted a broad immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants already in the country.


He has since distanced himself from the proposal, saying he believes any immigration overhaul must start with securing the nation’s southern border and proceed step by step. But his original legislation enraged the right, which saw it as “amnesty,” while many liberals and immigration groups felt he had not gone far enough and were frustrated with his current position.


By making his announcement in Florida, the state that Mr. Bush governed for eight years, Mr. Rubio signaled he planned to cede nothing to Mr. Bush, his former mentor. The setting will be Miami’s Freedom Tower, which served as a processing center for thousands of Cuban refugees fleeing the government of Fidel Castro and holds personal and historical significance for Mr. Rubio.


In the weeks leading up to his announcement, Mr. Rubio concentrated on fund-raising and putting together a campaign team that aims to be seasoned but lean.


Raising money could be a challenge for Mr. Rubio, especially in light of Mr. Bush’s aggressive efforts and the large network of Bush family allies. And, because he is less known than some of his rivals, he will need to introduce himself to as many voters as possible, particularly in the early nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.


On Friday, Mr. Rubio plans to do just that, heading to New Hampshire for a day of meetings with activists, business leaders and students, as well as the local news media. Friday evening, he will kick off the state party’s two-day “leadership summit” of 2016 hopefuls, speaking at the festival’s dinner in Nashua, N.H.



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