Rubio Campaign Press Release - This Is the Story of Marco Rubio's Presidential Campaign

December 30, 2015

It all started in Miami. In more ways than one, really.

On April 13, 2015, just over eight months ago, Marco Rubio launched his presidential campaign.

The setting, a packed crowd at the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, was a beautiful place for Marco's rousing announcement speech. But it was fitting, too: The Freedom Tower was where thousands of Cuban refugees were welcomed to the United States in the 1960s. They were fleeing a country where Communism threatened to snuff out an entire country's God-given rights.

The United States is a great country, Marco told the crowd — the greatest, still. But it wouldn't remain so unless the values that made America what it is, the ideas that made it a refuge for Cubans and so many other immigrants fleeing tyranny and poverty elsewhere, are preserved, he said.

Marco was there that Monday to announce that he wasn't going to wait in line while the Washington establishment picked a Republican nominee. He wouldn't be seeking reelection to the U.S. Senate, where too often conservative proposals, the kind of ideas America needs to stay vibrant, had been blocked by ossified Washington thinking and a doctrinaire liberal president.

What was the hurry? The stakes are simply too high, and Marco, like so many of the people joining him that afternoon in Miami, knew them personally.

His parents, Mario and Oriales Rubio, were able live the American Dream. Marco had opportunities his parents had never even imagined — college, law school, the chance to lead his state's legislature, to serve in the U.S. Senate, and now to launch a candidacy for president.

So the reason to hurry, in other words, is that the American Dream is slipping away — bad policies, overbearing government, and liberal ideology has gotten in the way of the path to prosperity and security that Marco's parents had paved for him.

Marco at his announcement speech on April 13.

Mario Rubio was a bartender; his son is a senator and a candidate for the most powerful office in the world. "That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, is the essence of the American Dream," Marco told the audience in Miami.

Keeping that dream alive, Marco said, means new ideas, not old ones. As it happened, Hillary Clinton had launched her campaign the day before Marco launched his — offering the perfect contrast.

"Yesterday, a leader from yesterday began a campaign for president, by promising to take us back to yesterday," he said. "Yesterday is over — and we are never going back.

"We Americans are proud of our history, but our country has always been about the future. Before us now is the opportunity to author the greatest chapter yet in the amazing story of America. We can't do that by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past. We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them."

The goal was clear: Restoring the American Dream, forging a New American Century. The next step: Making it all happen.

Lots of things have changed about presidential campaigns over the years — Marco was aiming to build a strong digital campaign, with supporters all across the country; he would be working with a media landscape radically transformed by innovation. Most of all, he'd be able to work with conservative grassroots supporters all across the country, many of whom had never been in politics before, who were inspired over the past few years to get involved.

But some things have remained: Iowa and New Hampshire are where a presidential campaign really begins.

Just four days after his speech in Miami, Marco was winging his way Manchester, New Hampshire, where he made a bunch of the traditional stops: door-to-door campaigning for a state representative, a meeting with the local newspaper's editorial board, and attending a house party hosted by some early supporters.

But there was a sign this campaign was going to be a little different, too: Marco made sure to stop by the local community college, too, to meet with students and talk up his record on reforming higher education. That's just one area where, long before the campaign began, Marco already had a record of policy innovation and a set of conservative ideas meant to bring our country into a New American Century.

Senator Marco Rubio at Manchester Community College in Manchester, N.H.

Days later, it was off to Iowa, where he gathered a crowd of over 100 grassroots supporters in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, and later spoke to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition about how he'd get government out of the way of people who want to live out their faith and traditional values.

As it happens, Ankeny is where the campaign later ended up opening its first Iowa organizing office. On hand to officially open the office in August was Rick Harrison, the Las Vegas native who is the star of the hit TV show Pawn Stars. (Harrison's said he feels Marco just "gets it," especially when it comes to his plans to emphasize vocational education and blue-collar jobs.)

The operation in Iowa has come a long way since: These days, he's rolling around Iowa in a custom bus, affectionately named the "Marcomobile."

Marco's campaign started off in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it certainly hasn't stopped there: In addition to nationally important campaign events and policy speeches all across the country, Marco has put just as much emphasis on South Carolina and Nevada, too.

The beginnings of Marco's race to the White House — a shock to the establishment, humbling odds, an ideas-driven campaign — may feel exciting and new to many Americans, but he'd been there before.

Just turn the clock back to 2009: After the country had been pitched into a deep recession, and the White House had responded with big-government programs and more control over the economy, Marco was worried even more worried about the direction of his country. He'd had real success as leader of Florida's state house, but when a Senate seat opened up, the establishment began lining up behind Charlie Crist, who was set to run as a moderate Republican.

Energized by the conservative movement that was growing across the country, Marco knew the time was right. Marco knew, as he wrote in his memoir, there were millions of other Americans just like him who were "genuinely frightened by the country's direction and felt compelled to speak out in opposition," and, like him, weren't just mad at Republicans, but Democrats too. In May 2009, Marco decided to take the plunge, and entered the Florida Senate Race.

But it wasn't an easy choice at all: Crist was expected to have an insurmountable fundraising advantage, and the full backing of the Florida GOP establishment. After Marco decided to get into the race, media reports assailing his fundraising numbers pushed him close to dropping out at times. The polls were no better: At times, he trailed by more than 30 points.

You know the rest of the story, though: Florida voters saw through the slick character Crist was, and Marco pulled off an incredible political upset. That fall, as the New York Times had put it, "the first Senator from the Tea Party."

Turn the clock back further, Marco had ascended to the Florida speakership by asking the people of Florida what their ideas to improve Florida were, with a promise to achieve these ideas while in leadership. He published his platform in a book, 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future, that he'd gathered from his fellow legislators and — more important — ordinary Floridians he met as he traveled the state. Dozens of them eventually became law.

This time around, it's not just that Marco once again leapt into the fray when the establishment wanted him to hold back. Like his speakership campaign, It's been an ideas-driven campaign, this time based on a comprehensive set of policy ideas for the 21st Century Marco laid out in American Dreams, the book he released before announcing his run. National Review said it was evidence that Marco would be "the GOP's long-awaited candidate of ideas." But, as Marco has emphasized on the campaign train, you don't have to rely just on his ideas — he already has some wins to show for it.

'Marco Rubio Has Killed ObamaCare."

So read an October headline in The American Thinker. Similar sentiments followed from other outlets, with conservative leaders praising Marco for dealing what could be a mortal blow to the president's failed health care law.

Of course, most Americans know that ObamaCare is, for now, still with us — so what was it that, just as candidates were comparing their records on fighting for conservative priorities, Marco had managed to accomplish?

Months into the campaign, Marco certainly had been busy on the trail. But it didn't get get in the way of his growing record of accomplishments. He's had bills passed that increase sanctions on human rights violators, encourage countries around the world to better respect the rights of women and girls (especially with regard to the horror of sex-selective abortion), and help block Hezbollah's financing.

His most important victory has come in the most important battle conservatives have right now: dismantling ObamaCare.

The story starts back in 2013, as the law was ramping up toward full implementation. As the disastrous rollout of the federal exchange that fall made clear, the Obama Administration had put together a deeply flawed, unworkable law. But Republicans needed a realistic way, without control of the White House, to stop it.

Marco and his staff soon spotted a vulnerability in the law: With its new taxes and regulations causing so much disruption to America's health system, insurance companies had to be coaxed into the law with various promises. One of them, called "risk corridors": Insurers that lost over a certain amount of money during the law's first few years would be compensated for those losses, paid for by companies making more than a certain amount of profit on the law.

But Marco realized what the Obama Administration was going to do when the law inevitably proved a disaster In November 2013, just as ObamaCare was being rolled out, he warned that insurers would lose more than expected, and that President Obama would try to give them a "bailout" with taxpayer money.

So, over the next two years, Marco raised awareness about this possibility and fought to ensure that Republicans would include it in the government funding bills — no easy task, because the insurance industry was so adamant on securing a bailout and the Obama Administration was insisting it wouldn't cost taxpayers anything. "Senator Rubio raised the alarm even while the Congressional Budget Office was saying that the program would make the federal government money," Heritage Foundation health expert Paul Winfree said recently. "His message was important in the effort to block the transfer of money to the risk corridor program."

Since ObamaCare has turned out worse than the official projections, Marco's efforts have already saved taxpayers $2.5 billion. With funding of the bailout blocked for 2016, too, savings will continue to stack up. The best news is, though, that this may be a deadly blow to the Obama Administration's efforts to keep ObamaCare alive: Insurers are considering leaving the ObamaCare marketplace because they simply can't make money without taxpayer backing.

As the New York Post put it, Marco may have already "slit the throat" of ObamaCare. The victory was so important that some of Rubio's opponents have attempted to question whether he really played such an important role. The facts show that he did.

As it happens, it's not just ObamaCare where Marco's knack for understanding complicated issues has served him well.

That was thrown into sharp relief starting in August, when the Republican primary debates began — a crucial opportunity for Marco to share the message that he'd already seen catching on in the early states, and to demonstrate his grasp of the problems that were worrying Americans.

The first chance was when the campaign team headed to Cleveland, on August 6. Fox News's inaugural debate of the cycle was the most-watched non-sports event in cable history, drawing 23 million viewers. Marco was well-prepared to put every minute to use.

Marco getting prepared behind the scenes at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

Asked right off the bat in Cleveland whether he had the experience to be president, Marco put the whole race in perspective:

I'm not new to the political process; I was making a contribution as the speaker of the third largest and most diverse state in the country well before I even got into the Senate.

I would add to that that this election cannot be a resume competition. It's important to be qualified, but if this election is a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton's gonna be the next president, because she's been in office and in government longer than anybody else running here tonight.

Here's what this election better be about: This election better be about the future, not the past. It better be about the issues our nation and the world is facing today, not simply the issues we once faced.

This country is facing an economy that has been radically transformed. You know, the largest retailer in the country and the world today, Amazon, doesn't even own a single store? And these changes have been disruptive. They have changed people's lives. The jobs that once sustained our middle class, they either don't pay enough or they are gone, and we need someone that understands that as our nominee.

If I'm our nominee, how is Hillary Clinton gonna lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck. How is she — how is she gonna lecture me — how is she gonna lecture me about student loans? I owed over $100,000 just four years ago.

If I'm our nominee, we will be the party of the future.

There's been no stopping Marco since: At each debate, he's triumphed, beating back attacks from his opponents and the media on issues from his Senate record to his personal finances. (Speaking of parallels to the Charlie Crist race — the personal attacks on Marco were no surprise this time.)

As the situation in the Middle East has descended further into chaos and the Islamic State has shown its ability not only to hold , foreign affairs has become an unexpectedly crucial issue in this campaign. That has been a development well-suited to Marco, who had laid out a foreign-policy doctrine over the summer and has a long record of fighting back against the Obama Administration over their weakness abroad.

It was never more clear than when Marco did something that, far as we know, is unprecedented in presidential debates: He exactly predicted the next aggressive move America would see from one of its enemies — Vladimir Putin's Russia — and was proven right within weeks.

"Here's what you're going to see in the next few weeks," Marco said at the September 16 debate at the Reagan Library. "The Russians will begin to fly combat missions in that region — not just targeting ISIS, but in order to prop up Assad."

Sure enough, two weeks later to the day, news reports confirmed that Russian jets had begun flying missions in Syria, targeting primarily not ISIS but anti-Assad rebels. Those strikes continue to this day — rousing no significant response from the Obama Administration.

Some of the most important moments of the campaign, though, have happened at campaign events that don't quite draw cable news coverage. A few of the most moving have been when Marco's been asked on the trail about his faith — something many candidates wear on their sleeves, but he isn't always the most forthcoming about.

At least, that is, until someone asks — and then what flows forth has been truly inspirational, to the audiences who've heard it in person, and to the voters who've seen the conversations caught on video.

One evening in New Hampshire, Marco was asked about how religion influences his political life, and delivered an extended, detailed explanation of how his faith has led him to support a free-market system and oppose the kind of safety net that can lull people into dependency. I don't think free enterprise works without a safety net, to help catch people that are having a tough time, Marco said. "But I also know that the safety net cannot be a way of life, cannot become a lifestyle, and in fact it's become that for many people. And my faith also teaches me that that's not good for the soul, it's not good for people, it's not good for their aspirations for the future."

He's gone even deeper at times. One of the most pressing questions that confront Christians, and people of all faiths, is the problem of evil — why does God allow so much suffering in our world?

That was the question Marco was asked at a campaign event in Iowa not long after the horrific terror attacks in Paris.

"We are biblically ordered not to be afraid," he told the pastors. "You know why? Because God is telling us no matter what happens it it's part of my plan, I will give you the strength to endure it whether you like it or not."

If we looked to God more often, in fact, Marco pointed out, we'd realize that what he has to give us isn't the solution to every problem — big or small. "If we did take more time to do that, to stop, and ask for that guidance," he said, we'd realize "you're not going to get the answer that you want. That's not what we pray for — we pray for peace, and we're ordered to have peace."

The humble response — Marco was frank about his occasional feelings of doubt — quickly went viral, drawing praise from conservative faith leaders, Evangelicals, Catholics, and more. Amidst a hectic campaign, it was clear that Marco, and those on hand, were glad to step back and reflect on the bigger questions.

Life on the campaign trail isn't always either high-pressure or pensive, though — occasionally it's just fun. Whether it's bumper cars at the Iowa State Fair or tossing the football around (supposedly he's been working on that aim), Marco has every once in awhile found some time to unwind.

Sometimes that's family time: He did his best this fall to make it home to Miami for his sons' football practices and games.

Other times, the campaign team catches him at a casual moment, and just starts tossing questions at him.

Then there's his intensive regimen of debate preparation. There's hours of policy work, of course, but Marco has also paid special attention to the lay of the land — what are the various players up to?

It hasn't been all fun and games on camera. He's been on the trail as much as he can, with voters in the early states and elsewhere, but getting Marco on the airwaves is crucial to getting his message out and inspiring grassroots volunteers to get involved.

The team has recorded a number of ads so far that get across the core themes of Marco's campaign. One of them, naturally, focuses on his dad — the man who taught him the meaning of the American Dream not just through words, but through deeds.

The ideas that allowed Marco's dad to work for the opportunities he has today, Marco believes, are under threat. That's the point he made in another ad, laying out the stakes of this election. It's understandable that many Americans don't recognize their country anymore, Marco says — that's what happens when you turn away from the ideals that made us great, and scorn the traditional values that keep our families strong.

Returning to those values and those ideals — with solutions that recognize the problems American families are facing in the 21st Century — is exactly what Marco wants to make this election about.

So where does this all put Marco today? Right where he wants to be. With the right conservative ideas, his optimistic message, and strong grassroots support, the momentum building behind Marco every day is easily visible. Just ask Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina — the latest high-profile rising conservative leader to get behind the campaign.

The campaign team knows this — not least the veterans of the 2010 race, who know what it's like to be on an underdog team that wants to shake things up. Marco is, once again, the man for the moment, the candidate with the vision to restore America's promise, and the optimism to win Americans over to his side.

Marco and the campaign leave behind a 2015 that has gone even better than they could have expected — and 2016 looks likely to provide everything they want it to be, too.