The Florida senator doesn’t like comparisons to Obama, but time spent on the stump in Iowa shows a growing audience for his youth and oratorical ability

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Marco Rubio was working the crowd, shaking hands, engaging in small talk and snapping selfies with eager fans. A few feet away, an elderly couple who had come to see the Republican presidential candidate on a balmy Thursday morning were discussing a speech Rubio gave moments earlier.

“I liked him before, but now I really like him,” the woman said to her husband.

“I have just one regret,” he responded. “I didn’t bring a tape recorder. I wish I could play that speech over again.”

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The exchange was emblematic of the effect Rubio, a 44-year-old senator from Florida who is regarded as the most skilled orator in a crowded Republican field, can have on an audience.

Roughly 150 people had crammed into a room on the second floor of a county Republican office to hear Rubio speak on the last day of a three-day swing through Iowa, the state that will hold the first nominating contest in the presidential primary next February. In less than 48 hours, he had made seven stops through the east of the state, to make a pitch that combined domestic and foreign policy while drawing heavily on his personal story.

Rubio rarely mentioned Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by name, nor did he attack his Republican opponents. The main reason Barack Obama won re-election in 2012, he noted to each crowd, was because Republicans spent all of their time attacking each other – creating four more years of what Rubio argued had brought the country to a crossroads.

“This is the most important election our nation has had in a generation,” Rubio said, before asking crowded rooms to consider the kind of society they wished to live in. He then recounted how his parents emigrated to the US from Cuba in 1956, to both paint a contrast with the oppression of those in less fortunate and free countries and emphasize the essence of the American Dream.

Rubio’s father worked as a bartender in banquet halls, his mother as a hotel maid and stocking shelves at the discount department store Kmart.

“They were never rich or famous, but they were successful,” he said. “And they were able to retire with dignity and security.”

Their sacrifices, Rubio told his audience, were what enabled him to stand before them, running for the nation’s highest office.

It’s a compelling biography that has played an instrumental role in Rubio’s meteoric rise in politics, from state legislator in Florida to House speaker and then to the US Senate in what was meant to be a long-shot campaign for federal office, in 2010. And now, it may contain the extra mile he needs to stand out among as many as 16 Republican presidential hopefuls.

Throughout his tour of Iowa – at events ranging from a keynote country club luncheon to a casual poolside happy hour – Rubio weaved his family background into an optimistic message on restoring economic opportunity and prosperity.

Quite frankly, I’m the only one running … that is running on this message that the future is now. It is here Marco Rubio

“Quite frankly, I’m the only one running up to now that is running on this message that the future is now. It is here. And we cannot be left behind by it,” he said.

Rubio’s prescriptions included solutions to reduce the national debt, train people for high-skilled jobs and transform higher education. He called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35% and cutting back on regulations he said stifled innovation. While speaking to older crowds, Rubio candidly discussed proposed reforms to entitlement programs such as Medicare and social security – in part to stress to elder voters that he was not out to get them.

The press releases that will go out, he said, might read: “Rubio wants to take away Medicare and social security.”

He added quickly: “That’s not true.”

Here, too, Rubio got personal, invoking his 85-year-old mother.

“I would never be for anything that’s bad for her,” he said. “I don’t want it to change at all for her, and it doesn’t have to.”

Any changes, such as raising the retirement age, would apply to people like him and those younger, Rubio assured them.

Although Rubio was well received, Iowans have more than six months to choose their nominee and many acknowledged they were still shopping around. It doesn’t help that they are inundated by Republican candidates seeking their votes and grassroots support, and Rubio – having spent the last few months focused on fundraising – is still building a presence.

To Rubio’s benefit, Republican voters almost always like what they see: a youthful and charismatic senator who many believe holds the key to bridging the gap among key demographics – particularly Latinos – that have eluded the party in recent elections.

Many also took away from Rubio’s humble beginnings a candidate who understands everyday struggles, another area where Republicans have struggled to connect.

“He’s the only one who’s really relatable to people of a working class,” Colleen Alexander, a 38-year-old pharmacy cashier from Waverly, Iowa, said after listening to Rubio at a summer cookout on the front end of his trip.

“You have to be able to live different experiences to understand them, and he’s been through some of the experiences that the rest of us have.”

He’s the only one who’s really relatable to people of a working class Colleen Alexander

Alexander said she worked two jobs and would like to go back to school, but had not found it to be possible given her financial situation.

“You should be able to work a 40-hour week and still pay your bills. You shouldn’t have to be working 80-hour weeks and still living paycheck to paycheck,” she said, adding that Rubio “really seems to understand those issues”.

Mel Mcmains, a retired financial executive from Muscatine, also saw an earnestness in Rubio.

“He is speaking from the heart. He’s one of the real people,” he said. “He’s had the struggles of paying off college loans, wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’s a self-made man – that’s impressive.”

Mcmains was nonetheless undecided. Rubio is on his shortlist, but the 72-year-old said experience could be an issue and lead him to select Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who will formally announce his candidacy on Monday, or even Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2012.

“I personally favor the governor’s experience as opposed to the senator’s experience, having a senator for president now,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rubio works his way through the crowd at the Windsor Heights Community Center. Photograph: Kelsey Kremer/AP

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Senator-turned-president Obama is a comparison Rubio is used to, but with which he wholeheartedly disagrees. That was on full display when an elder voter made the analogy directly to him at a breakfast event where Rubio fielded some questions from the audience.

“You are an extremely articulate, energetic, bright, young first-term senator. That reminds me of somebody eight years ago,” the man said, drawing knowing laughter from the crowd.

“I think there’s some significant differences between me and the current occupant of the White House,” Rubio said, before laying out those differences.

Obama, he said, was a “backbencher” while serving in the Illinois state legislature, while Rubio was speaker of the Florida House.

“I led that institution both legislatively and administratively. I ran it,” he said.

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he had only served in the Senate for a few years – Rubio pointed out he will be closing out a full term there when the election rolls around next year.

“This president has not been a failure because he was a senator,” Rubio said. “This president has been a failure because he has failed on the key questions of presidential leadership … I don’t care if he’d served 50 years in government, his ideas still wouldn’t work.”

Barb Gill, a 45-year-old insurance agent from Urbandale, took Rubio’s side. His freshness, she said, should be welcomed by Republicans as they seek to overcome the perception that their party is only old and getting older.

“I like the fact that he’s younger,” Gill said. “We as a party have to bring young people in, or we’re going to lose forever. It can’t just be the party of old white men.”