Rubio aims to ride ‘Marcomentum’ to future victories
Marco Rubio’s third-place showing in Iowa could be just what the U.S. senator from Florida needs to turbocharge his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
He wasted no time in using his bronze showing to depict himself as awinner.
“We’re ready to go in New Hampshire, and we’re excited about the momentum we’re carrying into this great state,” he said Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”
Displaying the confident aura of a winner, Rubio delivered what sounded like an Iowa victory speech shortly after
10:30 p.m. Monday night — generating live coverage on all three cable TV news channels while a maximum-audience was still tuned in.
“This is the moment they said would never happen. For months, for months, they told us we had no chance,” Rubio said. “We have taken the first step, but an important step, towards winning this election.”
His third-place finish was expected, and his campaign skillfully downplayed expectations, which makes his result look even better. By winning 23 percent of the vote, just one percentage point behind Donald Trump, Rubio will receive a wave of news media coverage as New Hampshire voters finalize their decisions for their state’s Feb. 9 primary.
That could prove valuable for Rubio, who is bunched with three other candidates for second place in New Hampshire. A CNN/WMUR poll released Sunday found just 39 percent of the state’s Republicans had firmly made up their minds.
Adam Hasner of Boca Raton, co-chairman of Rubio’s campaign in Florida, said “Marcomentum” is real.
He returned home Tuesday after several days aspart of a team of more than 40 Floridians who campaigned in Iowa. Hasner helped at events where Rubio appeared during the last few days at the campaign, and hewas deployed to two caucuses Monday night in Perry, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines, where he spoke on Rubio’s behalf before the voting.
“We could feel the momentum on the ground as more and more people got to see Marco in person. The more exposure he got in Iowa, it timed perfectly and paid off big,” Hasner said. “Now it’s time to take that same plan to New Hampshire.”
But Ed Pozzuoli, a cochairman of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s campaign committee in Broward, said he doesn’t think Iowa’s results will produce momentum that influences what happens in New Hampshire.
“It sounds logical, but it doesn’t prove out. You had John McCain winning the nomination after finishing a distant fourth in a six-person field in Iowa in 2008,” Pozzuoli said. “Historically speaking, New Hampshire voters are used to meeting a candidate four times or five times and getting a take of them.”
Pozzuoli thinks that’s good for his candidate. The New England Cable News Network’s candidate tracker for New Hampshire shows Bush has made 106 stops in the state to Rubio’s 76. (Competitors John Kasich, governor of Ohio, has made 180 stops and Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, has made176 stops.)
In many ways, Republican caucus-goers in Iowa turned the most unconventional of presidential campaigns — dominated for months by part-time Palm Beach resident Trump — a whole lot more conventional and provided Rubio with a huge opportunity to set himself up as the mainstream candidate with the best shot at prevailing over outsider candidates.
Iowa Republicans clearly wanted an outsider. The Iowa winner, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump and fourth place finisher Ben Carson together received more than half the caucus votes.
Cruz, who received 28 percent of the vote, is the most conservative of the pack. The state has a history of picking social conservatives (Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008) who don’t win the nomination.
Trump’s second place showing now puts him in the category of “loser” — something that runs counter to the entire rationale for his campaign. What many pundits saw as “the invincibility of Donald Trump took a real hit,” Pozzuoli said.
With the two leading outsider candidates, Cruz and Trump, unappealing to the party establishment, Rubio’s camp is selling him as the candidate who is best equipped to win the November election against the Democratic nominee. Rubio wants to be seen as the best option among the centercandidates with political experience: Bush, Christie and Kasich.
Hasner, who served as Republican majority leader of the Florida House of Representatives when Rubio was House speaker, said he doesn’t view the race as a competition among the candidates who aren’t Trump and Cruz.
“I look at the race as to who is the candidate who can unite the Republican Party, and who can attract the type of voters who don’t traditionally or historically vote Republican in a general election,” Hasner said.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Okeechobee, the other Florida co-chairman of Rubio’s campaign, said the top three in Iowa were far ahead of all the other candidates.
“They were all in the 20s [percent]. The rest of the field was all back in single digits, so I think when you talk about momentum and who’s got the wind at their back going into New Hampshire, I would think clearly Marco is part of that conversation,” Rooney said. He’d planned on joining Rubio’s Florida team in Iowa, but canceled because he was concerned the approaching snow storm could prevent him from making it to Washington, D.C. for congressional votes thisweek.
Rooney said he’d head to New Hampshire if needed. Hasner said he’d be among the contingent of 50-plus Floridians heading to New Hampshire to campaign for Rubio.
And Rubio’s campaign is looking beyond next week’s primary to the Feb. 20 primary in South Carolina. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., endorsed Rubio on Tuesday, calling him the “one shot in 2016 to beat Hillary Clinton.” (South Carolina’s other U.S. senator, Lindsey Graham, the former presidential candidate, has endorsed Bush.)
The Iowa Republican turn out was large by historical standards, but still involved relatively few people. The state has fewer residents than the combined population of Broward and Palm Beach counties. A total of 187,000 people voted in the Republican caucuses — about the population of Fort Lauderdale. Rubio’s 23 percent of the vote came from just over 43,000 people.
And the political fire coming Rubio’s way will only intensify, as opponents try to blunt any momentum.
Bush isn’t ceding any ground. His campaign distributed a YouTube video on Tuesday titled, “Jeb Contrasts His Record of Conservative Results with Freshman Senators Who Haven’t Made Tough Calls.” It shows Bush telling a New Hampshire crowd that Cruz and Rubio are polished speakers, but as U.S. senators aren’t in the business of producing results.
“If you look at their records, they’re gifted — in how they speak. But what about their life experience? Is there something in their past that would suggest they have the capability of making a tough decision … that they actually did something that might have been against their own ambitions in order to achieve a public good?” Bush said.
And U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, took a traditional view of the definitions of winning and losing, downplaying Rubio’s showing. “Marco Rubio didn’t ‘win’ by finishing third in last night’s #IowaCaucus,” she wrote on Twitter.
Other Floridians
Bush (3 percent in Iowa), like Kasich (2 percent) and Christie (2 percent), has focused the bulk of his energy on the New Hampshire primary. He decamped from Iowa early, andwas holding a town hall meeting in New Hampshire before the Iowa caucuses even started.
“New Hampshire does provide a reset opportunity, historically, for folks like Jeb,” said Pozzuoli, who is president of the Tripp Scott lawfirm.
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who established a residence in the Florida Panhandle when he was a highly paid Fox News talk show host, dropped out Monday night after an abysmal showing in Iowa, the state he won in 2008. He received less than 2 percent this year.
Ben Carson, the former neurosurgeon who retired to West Palm Beach, finished in a distant fourth place on Monday— months after hewas leading in public opinion polls.
While almost every other candidate who wasn’t already in New Hampshire took a red-eye flight to the state, Carson’s campaign issued one of the more unusual statements in the annals of presidential campaigns. It described the campaign as “stronger than ever,” but explaining that after 18 consecutive days on the campaign trail Carson needed to head home to Florida to “get a fresh set of clothes.”
Carson, in a statement, depicted his 9 percent showing as a victory. “I am grateful for the confidence Iowans have placed in me, as to night we defeated three former sitting governors and two previous Iowa Caucus winners. Regardless of how the media has attempted to marginalize me and my campaign, I still have the highest favorability rating and have remained among the leading candidates in every major survey.”
“We’re ready to go in New Hampshire, and we’re excited about the momentum.” Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican presidential candidate