Marco Rubio isn’t the Republican presidential front-runner, polling just below 7 percent nationally. But the Florida senator says his underdog status is nothing new, and nothing to fret about.
Rubio’s campaign released a new mini-documentary Wednesday chronicling the GOP candidate’s long-shot campaign for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat in 2010 when he ran against then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and substantially lacked the financial resources or national following that most candidates already have ahead of a Senate run.
“Trailing in the polls and opposed by the Republican establishment, Marco won the Republican primary and general election after inspiring grassroots conservatives,” Rubio’s campaign wrote of the 2010 contest in a statement released Wednesday.
Rubio has been reminding supporters on the trail recently of his victory at age 39 against Crist in 2010, drawing comparisons between his bold gamble then and his bid for the White House now.
“When I started the race, I was 50 points down. In fact, the only people that thought I could win were all in my house,” he reportedly said during a campaign event in Nevada last week. “When I decided to run for president, I had people come forward and tell me, ‘You need to wait; it’s not your turn.'”
“I had no idea there was a line,” he added.
The 11-minute video released this week documents Rubio’s path to the Senate from the moment he launched an exploratory committee and was polling at just 3 percent to the moment he jumped ahead of his opponents with an 18-point lead and went on to win the Senate seat.
“That race may feel like a long time ago, but there are some important parallels to today’s race,” Rubio wrote in an email to supporters Wednesday.
“I got into that race, against all odds, because it was an important fight about what the Republican Party should do for America, and whether we’d do what’s necessary to keep the American dream alive,” he wrote.
Rubio, the son of two Cuban immigrants, says in his narration that growing up around exiles provoked his interest in America’s political process because he “couldn’t be apolitical.”
“You are surrounded by people whose entire lives have been shaped by political occurrences. They know that government matters,” he says in the video. “So from a very early age, I understood that the freedoms and liberties we have in America, even our prosperity, is the direct result of the decisions made by people at a political level.”
The documentary continues with highlights from Rubio’s debates against Crist and soundbites from his campaign rallies and victory speech.
In a statement accompanying the video, the Florida senator wrote: “The right ideas helped us beat the establishment in Florida; the right ideas can help us retake the White House next year.”
