Marco Rubio Biography

Marco Rubio is the anti-tax, small-government conservative who was elected as a U.S. senator from Florida in 2010 and then ran for U.S. president in 2016.

Marco Rubio’s parents left Cuba in 1956, a few years before Fidel Castro took power. The family settled in Miami, where Marco Rubio was born in 1971.  The family lived in Las Vegas from 1979-85 before returning to Miami, where Rubio graduated from high school. After attending Tarkio College and Santa Fe Community College (in Florida, not New Mexico) he graduated from the University of Florida in 1993, then from University of Miami’s law school in 1996.

At age 28, Rubio was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in a special election on 25 January 2000. A Republican, he represented Miami in the 111th House district until 2009, moving up through the ranks to become majority leader and then Speaker of the House from 2006 until 08, when Florida’s 8-year term limit ended his time in office. He made a surprise leap to the U.S. Senate in the elections of 2010, buoyed in part by by the anti-tax “Tea Party” wave that year.  (Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once called Rubio “the most pro-taxpayer legislative leader in the country.”)

As a senator he stood against President Barack Obama‘s health care reforms, in favor of a balanced budget amendment, and repeatedly insisted that the federal government is conducting an “assault on the free enterprise system.” His conservative positions, good looks and Hispanic roots made him a rising star in the national Republican party, a position that was reinforced when he was chosen to give the Republican response to Obama’s 2013 State of the Union message.

Marco Rubio announced on April 13, 2015 that he would run for president in 2016. His run ended on March 15, 2016, when he officially suspended his campaign after losing the GOP Florida primary to Donald Trump.