On Monday, the defacto Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, Marco Rubio, made two appearances in Tampa. One at a downtown lunch/fundraiser at the Tampa Club, followed shortly afterwards with a campaign appearance at Datz Deli off of MacDill Avenue in South Tampa.
As Adam Smith reports in today's St. Pete Times, the crowd was a little thinner than when Rubiomania was at its peak back in the winter months.
"It seems like I'm not seeing you guys as much," Rubio joked to reporters. "We're out there, we're doing what we've always done. I think it's just that we're competing with a bunch of other races right now. Clearly, there's an interesting primary in the Republican Party for governor, there's an increasingly interesting Senate primary for the Democratic Party."
The former House Speaker is right on target with that analysis. Yes, Charlie Crist is doing well in the polls (at Rubio's expense), but the fact that there weren't more press at yesterday's event is proof that, well, Marco Rubio has already won his race for the Republican nomination for Senate. He won it in late April, when Charlie Crist threw up his hands and conceded that he was never going to beat Rubio, and that his only salvation for extending his political career was to go the non party affiliated route. Which he has done, and never looked back.
If nothing else, the whims of this Senate race speak to how long an election cycle it's been, and how nothing is a certain thing.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.