Former President Donald Trump‘s interest in selecting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as his vice president is setting off alarm bells for Democrats.
The Florida senator and one-time rival of Trump has turned into a reliable ally and offers the former president a direct line to a bloc Republicans have been flirting with taking from Democrats for years — Latino and Hispanic voters. While Latino and Hispanic voters aren’t a monolith, creating in-roads with them would put several states Democrats have taken for granted in recent cycles in play, Michael LaRosa, who is a former press secretary for first lady Jill Biden and special assistant to President Joe Biden, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times.
“But there is something Latino voters have in common: their Latin American roots and the pride that comes from casting a vote for someone who looks and talks like them,” LaRosa wrote. “Mr. Rubio would break a significant cultural barrier as the first Latino on a national ticket.”
Rubio could help Trump convince large Latino constituencies in swing states Arizona and Nevada while shoring up Republican-leaning Florida. It also could make normally Democratic New Mexico, which has the largest proportion of Hispanics in the United States, interesting.
There has been some doubt about whether Rubio could serve as Trump’s vice president, given the 12th Amendment doesn’t allow for a president and vice president to be from the same state, in this case, Florida, without losing its electoral votes.
LaRosa said this concern is “overblown,” citing former Vice President Dick Cheney’s residential switch from Texas to Wyoming, and he thinks Rubio could do something similar.
LaRosa said Trump selecting Rubio would be taking a page out of Biden’s 2020 campaign playbook. When he selected Vice President Kamala Harris, he made the choice to appeal to voters of color, a move that worked as black women turned out for the Biden-Harris ticket.
And winning over Hispanic and Latino voters will matter in states where they make up smaller shares of the electorate but where the races are still considered tight. Trump is beating Biden in Pennsylvania by more than 2 points in the Real Clear Politics average — a state Biden can’t afford to lose if he plans to repeat his 2020 success.
LaRosa argued, “There are voters who make their choice because they want to be a part of history and break ground more than, say, that they agree with the candidate, or the ticket, on specific policies.” Latinos could be those voters, and that’s why he said Rubio scares him and should scare Democrats this November.
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The Florida senator is one man in a throng of Trump vice presidential candidates, some of whom recently received vetting materials from the campaign.
The Washington Examiner contacted the Trump campaign and Rubio’s office but received no response.
