Purcellville, Va.
The police force in this otherwise quiet town an hour west of the nation’s capital looked a little peeved. Traffic had snarled on the road in both directions outside Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school where Marco Rubio held the first of four events Sunday across the Old Dominion. The officers directing cars and pedestrians trying to make it into the rally seemed overwhelmed. I asked one officer how many people were here for the rally.
“They told us 3,000,” he said, sounding annoyed. “It’s gonna be a lot more than that.”
The Rubio campaign says it estimated a crowd of 3,500, about half of the 7,000 he drew Friday in an Atlanta-area school. But more interesting than the raw numbers was the crowd’s composition: primarily young and married-with-children. They filled the basketball court and the second-level track around it, looking down at Rubio as he made his last pitch to Virginians.
The audience was energized, with members periodically shouting out cheers like “Viva Rubio!” and “Never Trump!” No political event this year has matched the excitement of a Donald Trump rally, but this Rubio event came close. Rubio’s performance was funny, exciting, and emotional.
At one point, a pair of protesters behind the stage held up signs that read “Rubio is an empty suit.” As the crowd booed and one overzealous Rubio supporter tried to rip one of the men’s signs, the candidate laughed it off. He opened his suit jacket to look inside. “My suit wasn’t made in China,” he deadpanned. “It’s not a Trump suit!”
As the protesters continued to shout, and before they were escorted out, Rubio kept going. “Ladies and gentlemen, the valedictorian of Trump University!” he said to loud cheers and laughter. (The protester, a 40-year-old Washington, D.C. resident named James Salt, told me afterward he’s voting for Bernie Sanders but that “Donald Trump says important things,” like condemning the Iraq War and this magazine’s politics.)
The audience was eager and ready to hear Rubio take on the Republican frontrunner. Rubio brought up the CNN interview Trump gave earlier Sunday morning in which the New York businessman was asked about the support he received from white supremacist David Duke. “And he said he doesn’t know who David Duke is,” Rubio said, and the crowd let out a collective groan.
“He was asked this morning two times, will you repudiate and condemn the Ku Klux Klan, and he refused to do that as well,” he continued. The crowd booed loudly. “We cannot be a party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.” The crowd went wild.
The electricity in the gymnasium helped Rubio get through an occurrence that might have sucked the energy out of the room, as his microphone cut out. Unable to immediately find a working microphone, Rubio tried shouting, but it was unintelligible. As the sound technicians scrambled to fix the problem, the crowd began chanting “Rubio! Rubio! Rubio!” and “Marco! Marco!”
Finally, Rubio got another, working mike. He tested it with his finger. Tap tap tap tap, the sound came through the amplifiers. The crowd went wild once again.
Like many super Tuesday states, Virginia awards most delegates proportionally statewide. If Rubio can run close, he’ll pull in quite a few delegates. If Rubio can pull off an upset and win Virginia outright, that would deliver a much-needed boon to his campaign.
In the second half of his address, Rubio shifted his tone, falling into his familiar but compelling personal story. “My story is the story of America,” he said. Rubio spoke of his parents’ native Cuba, where his father grew up poor and had been forced to work from the age of nine after the death of his mother. Rubio pointed out that his father came to the United States speaking only Spanish.
“The first words my father learned in English were, ‘I’m looking for a job,'” Rubio said. That line, which Rubio deploys infrequently, got one of the loudest responses of the afternoon.
Will Rubio’s four-stop blitz be enough to give him the win here? In just two days, Virginia will be among 13 states holding primaries or caucuses. Rubio needs to do well here, and perhaps win the state outright, to boost his chances against the GOP frontrunner, Trump. Virginia has a well-educated and relatively wealthy population that ought to serve Rubio well—Mitt Romney defeated Ron Paul in the 2012 primary by more than 20 points.
And Rubio has some help here. Figures from the Northern Virginia Republican establishment were in attendance in Purcellville to rally behind him, including Congresswoman Barbara Comstock and former governor and senator George Allen. The most recent Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, was also there, but in a different capacity: as an attack dog. A Ted Cruz supporter, Cuccinelli stood in the back of the gym to speak with reporters. He even had a folder with a written statement to give to the press.
“While Sen. Rubio and Donald Trump have spent much of the last week making personal attacks on one another, Ted Cruz has laid out his substantive vision to make Americans’ lives better and to defeat Hillary Clinton in November,” the statement read in part. Cuccinelli told me he expects Virginia to be a close, three-way race. He noted the impressive size of Rubio’s audience, though he dismissed their representativeness of Virginia Republicans.
“Rubio’s got the government types,” Cuccinelli said.
That would be fine for Rubio if he can get the other types of Republicans, too. The few polls of Virginia aren’t encouraging for the Florida senator. The most recent has Trump leading Rubio by 14 points. It’s no wonder Rubio went after Trump hard here.
“These are not personal attacks,” Rubio said. “These are facts about the person who is asking for our vote.” If regular Republicans hear the facts, the campaign is hoping, they won’t reward Trump with their vote. And they may just be inspired to rally around Rubio.
