“But Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work,” he said. “I mean, literally, the Senate — what is it, like a French workweek? You get, like, three days where you have to show up? You can campaign, or just resign and let someone else take the job.”

Marco Rubio has missed a lot of votes while running for president - but so did Obama: https://t.co/xr2M05TvwD

“The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you,” Rubio told Bush during the debate.

The vote concerned approving $310 million in state incentives to bring a branch of the Scripps Research Institute to Florida. Bush viewed the Scripps facility as a huge potential economic boon to the state, as one of his advisers predicted it would spur a boom in the biotechnology industry, creating thousands of jobs and raising Florida’s GDP by billions of dollars.



The final vote approving the package for the biomedical research facility passed the House easily, one key measure approving exemptions to public records laws, seen as crucial to bringing Scripps on board, barely got through. After the incentive package was approved, Bush hailed the vote as “a defining moment in Florida’s future.”

According to the Miami Herald, Rubio flew out of Tallahassee with a group of other statehouse Republicans three hours before the exemptions passed. He later watched the game from the owners’ box while the House undertook the final vote. Meanwhile, the Sun-Sentinel reported that Rubio had been invited to join the Marlins at batting practice before the game.

Rubio told the Herald that he traveled to Miami to deal with a “family issue,” but declined to elaborate, only saying that he had to be in Miami on Friday morning, the morning after the game and vote.

“If any member has a problem, they can talk to me. I didn’t leave to go to a baseball game. I had to take care of a significant family issue,” Rubio said, adding that, “If I could have had a later flight, I would have taken it.”

A Rubio campaign spokesman replied to a request for comment by sending a link to the Herald story cited in this article, then later repeated that Rubio "went home for a family medical reason — not the game."

But Rubio wasn’t the only lawmaker who missed the vote! In fact, a number of lawmakers flew from Tallahassee to Miami — on Jeb Bush’s state plane.