Sen. Marco Rubio could shake up the Florida Senate race if he changes his mind and seeks re-election, because his familiarity among voters would likely let him surge ahead of an otherwise obscure pack of candidates in both parties.
“The good news for Marco Rubio is he has very high name recognition,” Peter Brown, who surveys Florida voters for the Quinnipiac University Poll.
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Eight Republicans and three Democrats are running in the August 30 primary that will award each party a spot on the ticket. November matchup polls, however, show no candidate has a clear advantage, which is worrisome to Republican party leaders who are fighting to hold onto the Senate majority, and desperate to hang onto Rubio’s seat.
“If there has ever been a race that has been up in the air on both sides of the aisle, it happens to be this one, at the moment,” University of South Florida political science professor Susan MacManus told the Washington Examiner.
Rubio might be able to pull ahead of the pack, race analysts believe. A poll conducted last month by Associated Industries of Florida found Rubio running 8 points ahead of the current Democratic front-runner, Rep. Patrick Murphy. And Murphy leads all the declared GOP candidates.
“Some of the polling suggests that Rubio would be the strongest candidate for Republicans,” Ron Faucheux, president of Clarus Research Group, told the Examiner.
Rubio’s decision earlier this year to forgo running for a second term pushed the race into toss-up status, and it is now one of more than a half-dozen GOP seats that could flip parties and return the Democrats to the majority in 2017.
Republican leaders have not publicly called for Rubio to get on the ballot, which will close after a June 24 deadline. But the Senate Leadership Fund, which is affiliated with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and is operated by his former chief of staff, is eager to help Rubio fund a bid for a second Senate term and is encouraging him to run, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rubio appears to have cracked open the door to a possible run in recent days, telling CNN he would “maybe” run if his personal friend, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, was not already on the primary ballot.
A Quinnipiac Poll released last month showed Lopez-Cantera trailing Murphy by 4 points.
But while Rubio would likely fare better in the polls, he is also a flawed candidate, Brown said.
A May 11 Quinnipiac Poll showed his disapproval rating has skyrocketed among Florida voters to 49 percent following his unsuccessful presidential bid, which included a decisive and embarrassing loss in Florida’s Republican presidential primary.
Rubio was criticized throughout the campaign for missing committee work and Senate floor votes, which angering some conservative Florida voters that he abandoned the Tea Party base who helped elect him once he took office.
Rubio was also an initial co-sponsor of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people now living here illegally.
“The bad news for Sen. Rubio is his run for president hurt his job approval rating,” Brown said. “Rubio’s numbers have come down. But, it doesn’t mean he can’t jack them up again.”
Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, which rates races, said Rubio damaged his standing with Florida voters by dissing his role in the Senate.
An anonymous Rubio friend told the Washington Post in October he “hates” the Senate, though Rubio said he was merely frustrated with the chamber because Democrats were in control at the time.
“He will need to justify changing his mind, as well as everything negative he said about serving in the Senate while he was running for president,” Duffy told the Examiner. “That said, he is still stronger than the candidate field they have now.”
