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The Water Cooler Title: In Florida, Rubio Veers From Tea Party’s Script PENSACOLA, Fla. – When the year began, the stars could not have shined brighter for Marco Rubio, the fresh voice of newly invigorated conservatives who embodied the change that frustrated grassroots Republicans demanded from inside their own party. This week, facing a more complicated path to victory than he had anticipated in his race for a United States Senate seat, he is hoping to begin a Second Act. The Florida primary on Tuesday was once going to be Mr. Rubio’s chance to dispatch his main Republican opponent, Gov. Charlie Crist. But Mr. Crist bolted the party four months ago rather than face Mr. Rubio in the primary and is running as an independent in a three-way race. Now, facing intense competition for the moderate Republicans and independents who could be the keys to victory in one of the nation’s most closely divided states, Mr. Rubio is seeking to show that he is more than just an insurgent protest candidate – and is breaking with some Tea Party orthodoxy in the process. Mr. Rubio spends less and less time tying to tap into the discontent that has been at the forefront of the midterm elections. A wiser course for Republicans, he said, is offering an alternative, not simply being the angry opposition. “The solution isn’t just to paralyze government,” Mr. Rubio said in an interview as he traveled across Florida last week from here in the Panhandle to the heart of Miami. “Vote for us because you couldn’t possibly vote for them? That’s not enough. It may win some seats, but it won’t take you where you want to be.” The course he is taking bears little resemblance to other insurgent candidates across the country, many of whom hope to ride a combative streak – and little else – to Washington. Mr. Rubio is increasingly trying to turn his contest into one built more on ideas than outrage, which is why he delivered three detailed policy speeches in the past week alone on education, veterans’ affairs and retiree issues. The strategy, in part, is born out of necessity for a wonky candidate trying to compete for attention in what has become a pre-primary spectacle in Florida politics, where the best man in Mike Tyson’s wedding, a billionaire developer named Jeff Greene, is seeking to become the Democratic nominee for Senate, while another billionaire, Rick Scott, is running for governor as a Republican. Mr. Rubio, 39, a former speaker of the Florida House, won an ideological victory of sorts in pushing Mr. Crist from the Republican Party, but in electoral terms Mr. Rubio has struggled to overtake the governor in the Senate race. The outcome of the Democratic primary between Representative Kendrick Meek and Mr. Greene will define the three-way fall campaign and give Florida voters choices clear across the political spectrum. “I always knew that I’d have to run against two people who support the Barack Obama agenda,” Mr. Rubio said. “I just didn’t know I’d have to run against them at the same time.” With the race now heading into the general election phase, Mr. Crist has been running hard to sew up moderate voters from both parties, testing the idea that voters are as fed up with Republicans as they are with Democrats. “The independent agenda is the people’s agenda,” Mr. Crist said the other day as he dropped by a retirement complex that is populated nearly entirely by Democrats. Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor and close adviser to Mr. Rubio, said the race has been consumed by multiple distractions that are beyond Mr. Rubio’s control. But he said the message of an optimistic conservative, which he believes national Republican leaders are not offering, would set Mr. Rubio apart. “The fact is that Marco has three months to be better known and he will be,” Mr. Bush said in an interview. “He hasn’t peaked. Things change now in warp speed.” . As Mr. Rubio rode across the Florida Panhandle last week and was asked whether he peaked too soon, his always-present smile fell. “People say that, but I don’t know what that means. Our election is in November,” Mr. Rubio said. “There’s an ebb and flow to politics. There are other races that people want to pay attention to.” Yet over the last four months since the Senate race here was upended, Mr. Rubio has defied the Democratic-driven caricature of a Tea Party phenomenon. “”“” Many of the voters he comes across during his statewide tour were mad, but there was no anger, shouting or a hint of irritation from Mr. Rubio as he fielded questions from a lunchtime crowd in Pensacola about how he would stop what one woman described as a radical Democratic agenda overtaking America. “This is our country!” the woman declared from her seat at McGuire’s Irish Pub, looking to Mr. Rubio for affirmation. He nodded and paused a moment before answering. “I am not running for the United States Senate because I want to be the opposition to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid,” he replied in a measured tone. “I’m running for Senate because I want to create an alternative.” At each stop with voters, Mr. Rubio speaks of the urgency to restore “American exceptionalism,” which he believes is slipping away under Democratic control. He said the private sector has been stymied by uncertainty under the Obama administration and the health care law should be repealed. Yet an expansive interview with Mr. Rubio, as he rode in the back of a white mini-van along the Gulf Breeze Parkway from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach, found that he did not agree with flashpoints Republican candidates elsewhere have seized on. Does he support changing the 14th Amendment, as some Republicans have suggested, which grants the right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States? “You’re taking energy and focus away from that fundamental debate and spending time on something that quite frankly is not the highest and best use of our political attention,” Mr. Rubio said. “I don’t think that’s where the problem is.” Is the Arizona immigration law a good idea, with the police required to check the documents of anyone they stop or detain whom they suspect of being in the country illegally? “I don’t want Arizona to serve as a model for other states,” said Mr. Rubio, a first-generation American, whose parents fled Cuba in 1959. “I want Arizona’s law to serve as a wakeup call to the federal government to finally do its jobs with regard to illegal immigration.” Does anything impress him about President Obama? “Yeah, there’s a lot,” Mr. Rubio said. “Obviously his personal story of someone who didn’t come from wealth is a testament not just to his tenacity, but to America. I just strongly disagree with him on public policy.” When Mr. Rubio arrived for the opening of the Okaloosa County Republican headquarters, cameras flashed even before people lined up to pose for pictures. But the commotion quickly cooled when someone asked him to answer a question about immigration. “It doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker,” Mr. Rubio said, “so bear with me.” For the next eight minutes, he explained how he believes the United States must make a serious attempt to secure its borders. He said that amnesty would not work and that Republicans needed to take the lead, saying: “We are not the anti-illegal immigration party, we are the pro-legal immigration party.” As a first-generation American, whose parents came from Cuba, he added: “I didn’t read about immigration in a magazine. I know the good, the bad and the ugly about what’s happening on immigration.” The St. Petersburg Times’ PolitiFact Florida, which tracks what it believes are flip flops by political candidates, gave Mr. Rubio a “Half Flip” for his position on the Arizona immigration law. When the law was passed, Mr. Rubio said it could create a “police state.” Now, he speaks about the law in far less draconian terms. Joseph Pascarella, an organizer of the Niceville-Valparaiso Tea Party group, “”said that his and other Tea Party organizations in Florida had championed Mr. Rubio’s candidacy and still believe he would make the best United States Senator. But he added that he would be watching to see whether he modulated his views as the election season crept along. “He’s the best candidate around. What are the other choices – Crist who’s just out for himself?” Mr. Pascarella said. “But just because we support someone, doesn’t mean we are going away.”
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