Val Demings has Rubio on the ropes

ORLANDO — Let’s start at the top.

The first name Florida voters will see on their November ballots is Marco Rubio. Maybe for the last time. He’s is in the fight of his career.

Florida’s senior senator has led a charmed political life. But he has been inside a cloistered Capitol Hill bubble so long that he has lost touch with the real world, as he proved with a gaffe about paying off college student loans.

In a recent Fox appearance, Rubio was talking about his favorite subject — himself — when he explained how he wiped out his own six-figure college student loan debt.

“The day I got elected to the Senate, I had over $100,000, still, in student loans, that I was able to pay off because I wrote a book,” Rubio said. “If not, I’d still be paying it, O.K.?”

He got roasted on social media, and rightfully so.

As the record shows, Rubio filed a financial disclosure statement at the time, listing an $800,000 book advance. Why can’t every other struggling college kid do that? What’s wrong with you people?

This is the latest political gift from Rubio to Democrats, independents and reasonable Republicans all over Florida.

He voted the wrong way on the Inflation Reduction Act. He sided with drug companies over diabetes patients. He’s far to the right of the Florida mainstream on abortion and guns, two defining issues of this election cycle.

After the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which raised legitimate fears that other rights were at risk, he called a proposal codifying same-sex marriage “a stupid waste of time.”

He skips too many meetings in D.C. He has morphed into an unapologetic defender of Trump, which shows his instinct for survival.

“Rubio is a short Ted Cruz,” says long-time Florida Republican strategist Mac Stipanovich, now a registered Democrat in the wake of the Trump era. “No moral compass. No courage.”

And as Rubio will soon learn the hard way, Stipanovich said, “Florida is not Alabama. It is not even Texas.”

Democrat Val Demings is different.

Her campaign began slowly, and too many Floridians are still not familiar enough with her, but she’s starting to hit her stride. Labor Day weekend is the traditional kickoff of the general election campaign in Florida, the start of the 60-day sprint to Election Day on Nov. 8.

The people of Florida need to vote smart, and actually study a senator’s voting record. Watch what Rubio does, not what he says.

This would be something: to have a Senate race in this state actually decided on issues for a change, rather than simplistic slogans or who buys the most commercials.

But on that score, too, Demings is winning. She has raised a lot more money than Rubio. What she still has to do is make the Florida race a big part of the national conversation alongside Senate races in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Demings is picking up steam as Floridians are starting to pay attention. A Black woman, she’s the youngest of seven children from a working-class Jacksonville family. She had a three-decade career in law enforcement, rising to police chief in Orlando.

At a Ruth’s List event in Orlando in May, Demings had an enthusiastic crowd of pro-choice women on their feet.

“We’re fighting to protect the Constitution. We’re fighting to protect the rule of law. We’re fighting to protect our democracy,” she said.

But Rubio remains a big national name and can’t be taken lightly. He’s a good campaigner, and especially strong in his backyard in Miami-Dade, so you’ll hear plenty of phony attacks about how his opponent is a Marxist.

He’s a proven statewide winner, albeit against weak competition in both 2010 and 2016. Six years ago, he easily outperformed Donald Trump in Florida and defeated Democrat Patrick Murphy with 52% of the vote.

This time Rubio is on the ropes, and he knows it.

“I need people’s help,” he said in that Fox appearance on Aug. 27. “She’s raising a lot of money from a lot of liberals and Marxists all over the country.”

The message is straight from a tired Republican Senate campaign playbook: Demings is a “do-nothing congresswoman” who “votes with Pelosi 100% of the time.”

Rubio’s tin-cup plea for money was not just a political gimmick. Demings really is far ahead of him in raising money, and that, too, is a hopeful sign for Democrats.

Demings has people thinking she’s within striking distance. At the moment, it feels like she has a better chance to win a Senate seat than Charlie Crist has to beat Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s usually the race for governor that drives voter turnout, not a top-of-the-ballot Senate race. But this is Florida, and anything can happen.

“She could pull Charlie along if she catches on fire,” Stipanovich said.