Marco Rubio’s Campaign Doesn’t Know Why His Law Firm Bio Says He Lobbied Congress - Rubio has denied lobbying the federal government while in the Florida legislature.
by: Andrew Kaczynski, BuzzFeed News Reporter
In the mid-2000s, Marco Rubio was described as having “represented local governments before Congress” — meaning that he was a lobbyist — for a prestigious Florida law firm.
Officials for the Florida senator’s presidential campaign have said in recent days that Rubio wasn’t a lobbyist.
The Washington Post first reported that Rubio had registered as a federal lobbyist in the 2003 for the law firm Becker & Poliakoff. His campaign said the senator had no recollection of filing out the registration form, and a former associate who worked with Rubio at the law firm said that he could not recall Rubio lobbying the federal government. The associate described Rubio’s role to the Post as more of a coordinator and facilitator, but not a lobbyist.
A 2005 biography found by BuzzFeed News also describes Rubio’s role as more in line with traditional lobbying. That biography is for a second, different law firm, Broad and Cassel, to which Rubio had moved. One of the bullet points reads that Rubio, then the majority leader of the Florida House of Representatives, represented local governments before Congress.
Todd Harris, a Rubio campaign operative, told BuzzFeed News he didn’t know how the detail made onto Rubio’s page. “You can talk to every firm he’s every worked for and they will tell you he never lobbied the federal government,” Harris said.
[WaPo link in original] Aside from such early-career actual practice of law [such as it was; in the lobby?] the man's a career politician and nothing short of a career politician; an establishment figure, posing otherwise.
As vanilla establishment centric DC entrenched as to having endorsed Mitt Romney because he thinks a convention floor fight, (a/k/a a brokered convention), is inherently bad for the Republican party.
Really, that's him saying, "floor fight" = bad; for the party. As in party first, personal ambition second. Rubio. Marco Rubio. On YouTube. You can watch it again.
The WaPo item linked to from the Buzzfeed story begins:
Marco Rubio was 28 when he was elected to the Florida legislature. He was about to become a father and was struggling to balance the financial demands of a growing family with his political aspirations.
About a year and a half after taking his seat in Florida’s part-time legislature, Rubio got a financial boost, accepting a job at the Miami law firm Becker & Poliakoff for $93,000 a year. Although Rubio was a lawyer by training, his colleagues quickly recognized the advantage of having a charismatic, high-energy politician in the office.
“It was as simple as saying, ‘Marco, who should I call in this place about this issue?’ ” recalled Perry Adair, a real estate lawyer in charge of the firm’s Miami office, where Rubio worked from 2001 to 2004. “Marco knew the staff everywhere. He had been in politics all his life.”
During nine years in Tallahassee, as Rubio rose in prominence and ascended to the state House speakership, he became increasingly well compensated as he walked a narrow line between his work as a lawmaker and an employee of outside firms with interests before the state government.
Although he began his legislative career as a man of modest means, Rubio in 2008 reached an income level that placed him in the top 1 percent of American earners.
Whoa. The dude's a 1%'er. That, and posturing to Tea Party regulars, who are being taken for a ride, by the 1%.
Who in the world can take Marco Rubio seriously beyond viewing him as a wealthy-from-politics overly ambitious limited career politician appearing as if possibly a shade more likable as a person than Ted Cruz, (were you to get to know either)? No wonder the handlers program him tightly to scripted soundbites he can deliver in rapid gunfire-like fashion. Fashion without passion. Empty suit. Stuffed shirt. Chris Christie exposed that, and then in the latest "debate" going mean. Going nasty to taint Trump.
There's nothing there of substance, beyond that.
As presidential as a phone pole. But shorter.