Shining debate performances. Good press. Better poll numbers. And the implosion of a rival candidate.

Marco Rubio is having a moment in the GOP presidential campaign. Again.


But if it’s like Rubio’s other moments — rising to second in May after his official campaign announcement, wall-to-wall press criticizing President Barack Obama’s new Cuba policy in December — the confluence of his rise in the polls and the luck of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s early exit from the race probably won’t produce much more than a modest dose of momentum and a few favorable headlines.

Due to Rubio’s relentlessly on-message, penny-pinching campaign style, he’s reluctant to boast about his turn of fortune — or to spend freely targeting his rivals now.

Terry Sullivan, Rubio’s campaign manager, said he expects plenty of other candidates won't last.

“We need everybody not named Marco to fizzle. That is the plan. We need everybody to slowly fizzle out, and we think they will,” Sullivan said Monday, just as the news of Walker’s withdrawal broke, during a “Meet the Campaign Managers” event sponsored by Google, National Review and YouTube.

Long term, however, Walker’s abrupt departure could pay big dividends for Rubio, who immediately welcomed nine top Walker grass-roots activists and campaign staffers from three early states. At least two top Walker donors have chosen the Florida senator as well, sources said. Bush’s campaign said it had as many or more Walker alums, but declined to give a full list.

Some of the defections preceded Walker’s lackluster — and Rubio’s solid — debate performance last week. Many of them were the result of a long and private courtship of them by Rubio’s campaign.

Rubio’s campaign has an approach-avoidance complex with the turn of events. Publicly, it manages expectations by downplaying polls and talk of momentum. Privately, the campaign is hopeful that its strategy of laying low, performing well in debates, granting safe media interviews and staying out of food fights with Donald Trump is paying off.

One of the candidates Rubio needs to see fizzle: His former mentor, longtime friend and neighbor, Jeb Bush, who was governor while Rubio served in the state legislature.

For the first time, Rubio is leading Bush in a poll of Republicans in their home state of Florida. As he does nationally, Trump leads overall, with about 32 percent support, followed by Rubio (19 percent) and Bush (11 percent), according to a Florida Atlantic University poll first published Tuesday night by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Nationally, Bush is trailing Rubio as well. He’s polling at just 9 percent, in fifth place, behind Rubio (11 percent), in CNN’s most recent poll of the GOP electorate nationwide. None of the leaders in the GOP primaryhas ever held elected office: Ben Carson (14 percent), Carly Fiorina (15 percent) and Donald Trump (24 percent).

Fiorina’s rise in CNN’s poll was the most dramatic, at 12 percentage points. Rubio wasn’t far behind, with an increase of 9 points.

For both candidates, Wednesday's debate appeared to make the difference. Fiorina received more praise and press, but Rubio wasn’t far behind.

At the same time, Walker supporters were disappointed by both his debate performance and subsequent polls that showed the once-rising star was now an asterisk who couldn’t crack single digits.

“When I started seeing the polling numbers [Walker] was getting, it started to feel like it was going to be hard for him to push through and mount a comeback," said Drew Johnson, a longtime South Carolina Republican activist and GOP convention delegate, who was supporting Walker until switching to Rubio last Friday. "I felt I could best serve my overall cause, putting a Republican in the White House, by putting my support behind Rubio. Looking forward, I saw and continue to see Rubio as the solution."

Johnson made that call Friday morning, after watching Walker's bland performance in the debate and seeing his poll numbers slide further. He shared the news Friday night, in person, with Rubio, who was made available backstage at a Heritage Action forum.

Johnson was among a host of skittish Walker supporters and donors who were sending out feelers to the Rubio camp days before Walker dropped out on Monday. That activity has intensified following the second GOP primary debate, where Walker hardly got a word in while Rubio scored significant time in the spotlight, most of which he used to show off foreign policy chops.

Liz Mair, who was let go from advising Walker's campaign early in the campaign because she had previously backed comprehensive immigration reform and had made snide Twitter comments about Iowa and ethanol subsidies, refused to gloat over Walker’s misfortune but said Tuesday that the campaign’s demise was a long time coming. And many in Walker world were most fearful of Rubio, she said.

“Walker donors have been looking at Rubio for some time,” Mair said. “And Walker higher-ups were petrified of Rubio.”

Rubio is hardly the only candidate courting abandoned Walker backers. The campaigns of Bush, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Chris Christie have all been touting former Walker supporters who are now on their teams.

But Walker backers who liked the idea of a new face in politics gravitated more toward the Florida senator. Those who wanted an executive are leaning toward governors and former governors like Christie, Bush and Kasich. The social conservatives are more likely to sign up with Cruz or Trump. And those who wanted a complete change are in talks with Fiorina, Trump and Carson.

Dan Tripp, who headed Walker’s South Carolina efforts, scoffed when asked whether he was seeing evidence of Rubio buzz.

“I’m not seeing that on the ground, no,” he said. “They’ve got a reasonably decent team, but I’m not seeing anything peaking in South Carolina.”

He dismissed the idea that Rubio would benefit from Walker’s fall any more than any other candidate and noted that many people backed Walker because they appreciated his executive experience — something the senator can’t offer.

“I’m not bad-mouthing Rubio, but … he’s not the golden boy in South Carolina they’re trying to spin,” he said. “He doesn’t have a grass-roots organization here; he’s going to be fighting alongside Trump, Cruz and everybody else. I definitely don’t see this as a breakout moment for Rubio.”

But the Walker exit nevertheless came amid a Rubio hot streak. Of the former Walker backers on Team Rubio, seven are from Iowa, the first caucus state and a state where Walker planned to play big. Rubio recently brought on a state director there, has several trips planned to different corners of the state, and his Iowa state chairman, state Sen. Jack Whitver, has cachet with many of the state legislators who were previously backing Walker.

"I know they see the importance of getting around the state, and that importance was accelerated yesterday around 3 p.m.," said a senior Iowa Republican.

Rubio is unlikely to follow in Walker’s footsteps and ramp up a large on-the-ground Iowa operation — the expense of which probably helped lead to Walker’s decision to quit the race when he couldn’t raise enough money for the ground operations. Rubio’s campaign prides itself on thriftiness.

“People stop running because they run out of money and that’s why we’ve run such a lean campaign and sometimes taken knocks for it,” Sullivan told National Review’s Rich Lowry on Monday. “Everybody on the campaign has taken a pay cut to take the job, myself included. … We hardly give out anything in the way of bumpers or yard signs. You can go on our website and buy them.”

Asked if people had to pay to be part of the campaign, Sullivan said: “If they want collateral and tchotchkes, absolutely.”

In New Hampshire, Cliff Hurst, who was Walker's state co-chair, signed on in that same position with Rubio on Monday.

"I knew it was over for Walker," said Hurst, who called the governor "one of my great friends." But, he continued, "a presidential election doesn't wait for anybody."

Hurst was courted by Jim Merrill, a senior Rubio adviser, and announced the decision hours before Walker officially dropped out.

"We've got two debates under our feet, the senator shined in both debates, and more people are noticing he's very presidential," said George Seay, a major Rubio fundraiser who is co-hosting an event for him in Dallas on Tuesday night, with tickets starting at $2,000 per couple. Seay added that in the past week, he's received an uptick in inquiries about Rubio from Walker donors.

“We want to win in February, March, April, so I'm not surprised we're getting attention, but we've got a long way to go," said Seay, echoing the Rubio campaign party line.

But Rubio’s watch-and-wait-for-‘fizzle’ plan puzzled Tony Fabrizio, Republican pollster for Sen. Rand Paul.

“This doesn’t sound like a strategy, it doesn’t sound like a way to get votes,” Fabrizio said. “This is worse than a bad strategy: Sitting around and waiting for someone to get struck by lightning or until someone dies? Hope is not a strategy.”

