During a recent town hall in Derry, New Hampshire, a voter asked Sen. Marco Rubio about the large number of Senate votes Rubio has missed in recent months. “I just wanted to know what your reason for that is,” the voter said.
“I’m running for president,” Rubio answered. “I’m here in New Hampshire talking to you.”
Rubio has taken some flak — most notably, from Donald Trump — for not showing up for votes. He’s missed most of October’s votes so far. From April to June of this year, he missed about one-third of the votes, and from July to September, he missed a little over half the votes. That’s not good, even by Senate terms.
The striking thing, though, is that while Rubio is not in Washington, he is also not on the campaign trail in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, at least as much as many of his Republican rivals. Based on a number of publicly-available trackers that keep a record of each candidate’s visit to each state, Rubio is 13th out of 15 GOP candidates in the number of days, or parts of days, that he has spent in the early voting states. He’s spent fewer days even than some candidates who dropped out weeks ago.
Rubio has spent a combined 44 days in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in the 2016 cycle, which means pretty much the entire time since the 2012 presidential election. That is fewer days than Bobby Jindal (90), Carly Fiorina (83), Rick Perry (83), Rick Santorum (73), Chris Christie (72), Ted Cruz (69), Mike Huckabee (66), Rand Paul (66), Lindsey Graham (62, just counting Iowa and New Hampshire, since Graham lives in South Carolina), Jeb Bush (49), Ben Carson (47), and Scott Walker (45).
Only Donald Trump (41) and John Kasich (40) have spent fewer days in the first three states.
In Iowa, Rubio has spent all or part of 20 days, compared to the longest Iowa resident, Jindal, with 66. Of course, Jindal isn’t exactly setting the polls on fire, and besides, not every candidate focuses on Iowa — Jeb Bush has spent just 14 days there. Trump, Christie, Bush, and Kasich have also spent fewer days in Iowa than Rubio. Still, according to Republican blogger Craig Robinson, Rubio has not established a strong presence there.
“Rubio has a small campaign staff on the ground in Iowa and an office in Ankeny,” writes Robinson, a former political director of the state GOP, in an email exchange. “If anything is lacking, it’s a commitment to the state…When I say lack of commitment, I mean I’m not seeing the campaign doing the necessary things that it takes to win here. I know they want to peak at the right time, but you have to lay the groundwork in order to capitalize on it…I just don’t see much of a commitment from them.”
In New Hampshire, Rubio has spent all or part of 13 days, compared to the most frequent Granite State visitor, Christie, with 47 days, and Bush, with 22. In South Carolina, Rubio has spent 11 days, to Santorum’s 27 and Bush’s 13.
So Rubio hasn’t been voting on the Senate floor, and he hasn’t been spending day after day after day in the early primary states, either. What is he doing? “He’s working his tail off,” says Rubio spokesman Alex Conant. “It’s possible that somebody is working as hard as Marco, but nobody’s working harder.”
It appears what Rubio is doing most of the time is fundraising. The recent report that he raised $5.7 million in the third quarter — not an impressive sum compared to Carson, Bush, and Cruz — suggests that Rubio has a long way to go to run a first-tier campaign. So this week, for example, Rubio was on an early Wednesday morning flight from Washington to Houston, and then, after a three-hour stay, on another flight to Dallas, and Thursday on a flight to California, all for fundraising before flying to South Carolina on Friday. All of the flights are commercial, which saves money and allows the campaign to present itself to donors as a lean-and-mean operation. But it takes a lot of the candidate’s time, and wears him out, too.
Of course, other candidates have heavy fundraising demands and manage to spend more time in the early states. And the senators among them spent more time in the Senate. Ted Cruz, for example, raised more money, spent more time in the early states, and was present for more Senate votes than Rubio. Rand Paul hasn’t raised as much money, but he’s made nearly every Senate vote this year and spent more time in the early states. Lindsey Graham has a vote-missing record nearly as bad as Rubio’s, but he’s spending a lot of time in the states.
Of course, one characteristic of the time-spent-in-state numbers is that the candidates who spend the most time in Iowa and New Hampshire, in particular, are those farther back in the pack hoping to establish a foothold there. Rubio is doing a little better than that — he’s currently in fifth place in Iowa, and fourth in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. So perhaps he doesn’t feel he has to be there as often right now.
But the fact is, as far as the voters are concerned, Rubio doesn’t have a great story to tell about what he’s been doing lately. Going back to that question from a voter in Derry — what’s your reason for not voting more in the Senate? — Rubio’s full answer was a picture of misdirection; he really didn’t give a very convincing account of his activities. It’s long, but here is the answer in its entirety:
At some point, Rubio will have to cut back on the fundraising and devote more of his time to campaigning; it’s the natural rhythm of things as the Iowa caucuses approach. And if he does well in Iowa or New Hampshire — a number of people at the Derry event implored him to visit again soon — he’ll raise more money without having to chase it as hard. But right now, Rubio has managed to be the candidate who is often absent from his day job while still not spending that much of his time with voters.
