Sen. Marco Rubio said in his first day back in the Senate that he wants Donald Trump to lose the race for the Republican nomination, but that he’s not ready to endorse a non-Trump candidate yet.
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“I don’t have any announcement on that,” he said in an interview near his Senate office.
He also said he doesn’t want to be vice president, and that he won’t be running to hold onto his Florida Senate seat. “I’m going to finish my term here and then be a private citizen,” he said.
Rubio, who suspended his presidential bid on Tuesday night, met briefly with reporters after a warm reception from fellow GOP senators at a private GOP lunch in the Capitol.
Rubio said the party was not conspiring to take the nomination from Trump, who is the front-runner, but he said a contested convention is a possibility if Trump does not garner the required 1,237 votes needed to win the nomination outright.
“There is still an open question about whether he gets the 1,237,” Rubio said. “Hopefully there is time still to prevent a nomination which I think would fracture the party and be damaging to the conservative movement.”
Rubio said he believes his campaign failed because his platform promoting economic opportunity didn’t resonate with voters.
“I still think that is the right approach,” Rubio said. “But politically, it’s not something that has cut through in a year that someone like Donald Trump has, so far anyway, been able to capture that frustration and anger and exacerbate it in a way that has helped him win.”
Rubio said his past support of comprehensive immigration reform “was a factor,” but added, “I don’t think it’s the reason I’m not still in the race.”
Rubio blamed a complex electorate that is still suffering from the 2008 recession and looking for something different in a presidential candidate.
“It’s a very unusual political year,” Rubio said. “People are going to write books about this year.”
