AMES, IOWA — They came early and lingered late. They were Republicans who see promise in presidential candidate Marco Rubio, even though they have yet to pick a horse in the race for their party’s 2016 nomination.
The Florida senator jammed nearly 200 people into a nondescript hotel ballroom Saturday morning, among them voters and political activists here in the state that hosts the crucial first nominating contest who had come to hear his pitch for the presidency in person for the first time. Nobody skipped out before Rubio had finished, and many stayed afterward to shake his hand, snap a selfie and offer personal words of encouragement.
“He may be Hispanic. But financially, values, morals, all of that, he’s one of us,” Linda Bravard, a 72-year-old retiree from rural Boone, in Central Iowa, said after hearing Rubio’s speech. “He is not a multimillionaire — that is really going for him in Iowa.
Bravard, who like more than 92 percent of her fellow Iowans is white, said she has yet to throw her support behind any of the candidates running in what has been described as the deepest field of Republican presidential candidates in generations.
But Rubio’s personal story and the charismatic way he delivers it resonated with her. The crowd warmed to Rubio’s story about his modest yet intact nuclear family anchored by a loving mother and father, and particularly responded when the senator said he and his wife work hard to ensure his four children receive a private, “Christian-based” education.
“He is one of us,” Bravard repeated more than once, when asked about the 44-year-old first-term senator after hearing him speak.
Rubio’s footprint in Iowa is small, but is expected to grow over the summer. Currently, his team consists of two full-time political staffers and Jack Whitver, a 34-year-old state senator serving as the Floridian’s Iowa campaign chairman.
In two campaign events Saturday, the Ames meet-and-greet and an afternoon cattle call of Republican presidential candidates in Boone hosted by Sen. Joni Ernst, Rubio said he planned to return to the Hawkeye State often, especially now that his kids are out of school for the summer and he can travel with his family. Iowans who have pledged their support say that is the expectation — that he will make a play for the state.
Strategically, the senator could try and emulate Ernst (the two Republicans rely on some of the same top advisers.)
She won the 2014 Senate primary by positioning herself a unifying Republican candidate who forged relationships with the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP, while avoiding getting pigeon-holed into one camp or another. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth, two groups often at odds, both endorsed Ernst. Building a broad-based coalition in Iowa would fit with Rubio’s larger strategy for winning the 2016 nomination.
“We saw Joni Ernst — the reason she was so successful is she was able to unite the different factions of the party,” Whitver told the Washington Examiner. “I think Marco has that potential. We’re going to go to all kinds of groups and go after every vote in the state.”
Some of Rubio’s competitors are casting doubt on his prospects.
They concede that it’s hard to go toe-to-toe with the senator’s personal story. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants — his father worked as a bartender, his mother a hotel maid — who came to America in search of more freedom and opportunity. He grew up poor in the Cuban immigrant community of South Florida, and still lives a relatively modest life that could ring familiar with voters in the Iowa heartland.
But they say Rubio is a show horse without the governing chops to win over a caucus crowd that wants more experienced leadership after two terms of President Obama, who was a 47-year-old first-term senator when he won the White House in 2008. Indeed, the consistent leader of the GOP pack in Iowa at this early stage has been Scott Walker, the second-term Wisconsin governor.
“He’s going to have to talk in more detail about the issues,” said a Republican operative, who is supporting one of Rubio’s opponents and requested anonymity in order to offer criticism.
Even voters drawn in by his compelling personal story say he has to put more policy meat on the bones to win their vote.
Suzanne Gebel, 49, was in Ames to get a glimpse of Rubio and raved about what she heard during the Saturday morning meet-and-greet. The Urbandale, Iowa, resident said the senator touched on themes that were thick with “Iowa values” that should resonate here. But Gebel needs to hear more policy specifics from him to earn to earn her vote.
“There are some things he could have touched on a little more,” said Gebel, the executive director of the Iowa Funeral Directors Association. “I would have liked to have heard a little bit about immigration (and) about how to get the United States better respected in the world again.”
There have been questions about whether there are limits to Rubio’s appeal.
Could his lack of executive experience cost him with the Republican Party’s governing establishment, which prizes nominating a candidate with decisive leadership skills? Could his past support for comprehensive immigration reform that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants cost him with conservatives, particularly in Iowa, where grassroots opposition to such policies isn’t absolute but is significant?
Thus far, the answers are “no” and “no.”
Rubio’s national poll numbers are solid, and consistently place him among the top three frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination in part because of his prowess on foreign policy.
In the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, Rubio was tied for sixth place with 2012 GOP caucuses winner Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator. But J. Ann Selzer, who runs the respected survey, said Rubio is much stronger.
He finished first when potential caucus goers were asked to name their “second choice,” hardly a consolation in a crowded field that might see others drop out or be eliminated from contention by the time the voting happens. Rubio finished third in favorability, with 60 percent viewing him positively, and 49 percent said they would consider him. “It really does suggest he’s poised to break,” Selzer said, in a Register story about the poll.
That’s what Rubio has going for him. Iowans don’t know too much about him, yet. He’s made a good first impression and has room to grow — if he can deliver.
“He just tells it like it is,” said retiree Virginia Johnson, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who along with her husband spent Saturday listening to candidates speak at Ernst’s “Roast and Ride” event. “He can answer the questions quickly. He doesn’t stammer and stutter.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the Republican process for dealing with second preference candidates in Iowa.
Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.
