LAS VEGAS — The Republican presidential primary was supposed to be a race down two lanes, one conservative and the other establishment.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has meticulously cultivated the image of a conservative firebrand, and has built his primary campaign strategy around consolidating the conservative “lane” that includes conservative voters — Tea Partiers, libertarians, evangelical Christians, and so on. If former Florida Gov. Jeb has any chance of winning, he would need to consolidate the so-called GOP establishment lane (ironically, Donald Trump appears to be winning among these Republicans.)
Enter Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who rounds out the top tier within the field of a dozen candidates, along with Cruz and Trump, the celebrity real estate mogul. With Bush faltering and the other contenders who emanate from the Republican Party’s governing wing stuck in the back of the pack, Rubio has been branded the leading establishment candidate, both by political pundits and his Republican opponents that are hoping to suppress his support among self-identified conservatives.
It is true that mainstream Republican insiders are coalescing behind Rubio as their best shot of adapting the GOP to America’s changing demographics and beating presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, especially if the alternatives are Cruz and Trump. But it’s a misnomer to assume that Rubio appeals primarily to mainline Republican voters, and that could explain why his conservative opponents are working overtime to brand him as such.
That was evident Monday during a Rubio campaign rally in Las Vegas. The Nevada caucus comes fourth, after Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and about 300 people filled up a ballroom inside the Renaissance Hotel to hear the senator deliver his campaign pitch. And conversations with more than half a dozen of them revealed anger with the Republican establishment — a term they volunteered to describe the party apparatus, writ large, in Washington.
Not exactly what might be expected from mainstream Republican voters who are supposed to be prime targets for the likes of Bush, or, say, Ohio Gov. John Kasich. But what made their stories believable, in addition to Rubio’s history of toppling a sitting governor in a GOP primary on his way to winning his Senate seat in 2010, were these voters’ second choice for president, if Rubio was suddenly not in the race: Unanimously, it was either Cruz and Trump, with one Nevadan saying New Jersey Gov. Christie would also be in the mix for his vote.
“Either a Cruz or a Christie. They’re a little bit opposites, but I like Christie,” said Sam Halpern, 76, who resides in Las Vegas. Halpern said he like Christie’s toughness, and is drawn to Cruz because he “says it like it is.”
Here’s what Halpern had to say about Trump: “He’s telling the truth; I kind of like him because of, his wealth, he don’t need this crony capitalism, he don’t need all of these people telling him what to do. He says it like it is. Of course there are certain things he says that are [problematic.] I could vote for him, but I’m not going to vote for him in the primary. He turns off a lot of people; I want to win.”
James Frantel, 47, also of Las Vegas, is another Rubio supporter who likes Cruz and Trump. “I do like Ted Cruz; I like Donald Trump’s message without all the bombast and lack of sensible articulation on his part,” he said. Why Cruz? “Not afraid to speak his mind, firebrand and strong on national defense, he’s articulate and very intelligent,” Frantel said.
Cristina Bernardo, 50, who was visiting from Fayetteville, N.C., waxed eloquent about Rubio, describing him as “even keeled, he’s doesn’t get rattled in stressful situations. She continued: “He’s eloquent, he’s well spoken, to be redundant, and I really like that about him. Instead of having someone that goes off on a tangent or just gives you B.S. lines. He just kind of tells is like it is. I like that about him.”
About Trump, Bernardo added that she likes him because he’s “brash and he’s out there. But I don’t think as a politician he would do with working with other politicians around the world.”
Rubio sits roughly in third place in state and national polls, and remains a real threat to win the Republican presidential nomination. The polls are likely to shift plenty between now and when the voting begins with the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1. But the interviews with Rubio supporters in Las Vegas, while anecdotal, reveal that it might be premature to label candidates as “establishment” or “Tea Party” before the voting begins next year.
Mark Hutchison, Nevada’s lieutenant governor and chairman of Rubio’s campaign in the state, said he wasn’t surprised that Rubio voters also liked Cruz and Trump. Nevada has a history of offering strong support for outside candidates and Hutchison said just because you’re a mainstream Republican, it doesn’t mean you’re not as frustrated and supportive of a change in political leadership as voters identified as right wing.
“They want people who are not beholden to special interests or to the establishment types,” Hutchison said. “I think you’re seeing that in the selection of their candidates, because all of the people you just mentioned are either not involved with establishment politics or haven’t been in elected office that long and aren’t considered part of the establishment.”
