Florida Sen. Marco Rubio plans to be present for decisive votes in the U.S. Senate, but will otherwise be on the campaign trail trying to amass support for his presidential campaign.
According to a recent report by USA Today, the Republican senator has missed nearly 30 percent of the roll call votes held since the 114th Congress convened on Jan. 6, the highest absentee record of any senator, Democrat or Republican, running for president.
Several amendments to an education bill and a pair of measures to reauthorize funding for the federal Highway Trust Fund were among the votes missed by Rubio, who holds the No. 3 spot in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings. However, the freshman senator was present for an unsuccessful attempt to defund Planned Parenthood through a vote held in early August and for a procedural vote Thursday on a disapproval resolution tied to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Despite polling in the middle of the GOP field, Rubio adviser Alex Conant told the Examiner that the Florida senator is “doing what is necessary to run a competitive presidential campaign.”
“He has returned to the Senate whenever his vote would be decisive, is regularly briefed on issues before his committees, and keeps up on the important constituent work that his Senate staff does,” Conant said.
“As he travels the country talking about his agenda to help the middle class, there will be no doubt where he stands on any important issues before the Senate and the nation,” he added, while noting that it is “not unusual” for senators running for president to neglect their day jobs in order to meet voters.
Conant provided a breakdown of the absentee records of past senators who’ve run for president, including Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton who voted 51 percent of the time as a senator running against then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, and Secretary of State John Kerry who voted just 10 percent of the time as a senator running against former President George W. Bush in 2004.
Two of Rubio’s senatorial colleagues and presidential opponents, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, have both skipped less than 5 percent of the 263 votes held since the beginning of the year.
Unlike Rubio, who previously announced that he will forego running to keep his Senate seat in 2016, Paul recently decided to seek re-election to the Senate while continuing his presidential campaign after convincing Republican leaders in his home state to amend a law that had previously prevented him from doing so.
Rubio has maintained net-positive ratings in several key battleground states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A Quinnipiac University poll out Friday showed him with the second highest favorability rating, 66 percent, in the 16-person Republican field among likely Republican voters in Iowa.
