Marco Rubio hasn't been to Tampa much since being elected as the state's junior U.S. Senator nearly a year ago, so members of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce had lots of issues to discuss with him at a business lunch this afternoon at the University Club in downtown Tampa.
However, for members of the media, it was getting a crack at him afterwards that made it worth their while.
Unless you've been overseas or have ignored the news in the past week, you know that the term "son of Cuban exiles" doesn't really work when describing the 40-year-old Rubio, not after the St. Petersburg Times and Washington Post began investigating when his parents actually left Cuba. He has said in the past it was after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, but documents revealed by those papers found that Mario and Oriales Rubio arrived in the United States, legally on an immigration visa, much earlier — in May 1956.
"The bottom line is that I got the dates wrong because they happened 15 years before I was even born," he said at a press conference in the Chamber's offices after the lunch.ABC 28's Brendan McLaughlin.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2011.