In May 2008, when Marco Rubio retired as Florida’s House speaker, he bid his colleagues farewell with a passionate defense of American exceptionalism. Standing on the floor in front of the speaker’s rostrum, Rubio invoked boatloads of refugees washing up on American shores, quoted John F. Kennedy and lauded political dissent.

“It’s honestly one of the greatest political speeches I’ve seen in my life,” said Republican operative Gregg Keller. “To this day, I can’t watch it without getting a lump in my throat.”


But youthful charisma wasn’t the only aspect of Rubio’s delivery that has stuck with Keller. “He’s got this ice,” recalled the veteran operative. “He’s got this water in this cup that’s got ice and it’s making weird noises.” Indeed, video of the speech shows Rubio halting mid-delivery at dramatic moments to reach down to a table in front of him and take noisy swigs from a Styrofoam cup.

Rubio, of course, became famous five years later for diving for his water bottle and taking a sip in the midst of a roughly 14-minute nationally televised response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. He responded in good humor by tweeting out a picture of the empty bottle, and over the next week his PAC raised $100,000 off the sale of water bottles.

But the water tic has persisted and remained noticeable on the campaign trail this fall, drawing comment from those who have worked with and watched the Florida senator. Like Richard Nixon’s perspiring or John Boehner’s crying, Rubio’s need for constant hydration is a bodily quirk that impinges on his political life.

The 44-year-old senator takes care to ensure the availability of water at his public events and can be particular about how he takes it. His advance team has mandated exact requirements for the vessels he will drink out of: stemless glasses — not stemmed ones or water bottles. He reaches for it constantly during public remarks. Its absence has thrown off his delivery, and he and his campaign have acknowledged its presence by attempting to turn it into a joke. On the trail, he has even asked hecklers to time their outbursts around his breaks for it.

“Marco does have a water thing,” said one longtime Rubio associate who has been affiliated with his past campaigns. “I don’t know what it is. He says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. It’s something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something.”

A spokesman for Rubio, Alex Conant, declined comment for this story, saying only that “POLITICO has lost its mind.” In a recent New Yorker profile, Rubio attributed his extraordinary need for water to unspecified allergies developed since 2011. “I said, ‘How come I’ve never had allergies before, and now, suddenly, the last four years I’ve developed allergies? And the answer the doctor gave me was: ‘Well, because you’re travelling to places that you never used to travel to before.’”

But the testimony of Rubio’s longtime associates and his 2008 speech belie this explanation, indicating that Rubio’s water tic predated his career in the United States Senate, even if it escaped notice before then.

Even during brief remarks — like his speech at CPAC in February 2010 and his Senate victory speech in November — Rubio has consistently had water at hand and snuck sips of it into his delivery. Its absence, meanwhile, has thrown him off balance.

When Rubio addressed CPAC in 2012, event staffers failed to stock the podium with fresh water for his speech. At an early applause line, Rubio — who had been visibly struggling with dry mouth and licking the inside of his mouth and his lips, as he often does during speeches — reached down for his water with his right hand, and coming up empty bent his knees and peered under the podium but did not find what he was looking for.

“I remember standing backstage and cursing out loud because there was nothing we could do,” said a person staffing the event. “It caused him some awkward pauses throughout the speech.” Halting his speech again for another applause line several minutes later, Rubio brought his empty right hand up to his nose, lowered it, brought it up again to his lips and rubbed them.

At some point, Rubio became self-conscious about the water breaks, and he began narrating them at several events later that year.

Speaking at a major Republican fundraiser in March 2012, the senator sipped from a glass of water and laid it down on the ground next to him. “I hope I don’t need a drink of water during the speech, that’s a long reach down there, but I’ll — you’ll forgive me,” he said.

Campaigning for Mitt Romney at an elementary school in Las Vegas in July, he took advantage of extended applause to reach for his bottle. “Keep clapping. I can drink some water while you do,” he said. “If you’re here to heckle me today, could you wait another five minutes, because that gives me the moment to get my water.”

When an attendee shouted “Marco for vice president” at the same rally and prompted the audience to break out in wild applause, Rubio went again to his water, and said, “Hey, that was not the kind of heckler I was expecting, but thank you for the water, I appreciate it.”

Taking the stage after Clint Eastwood’s memorable performance at the Republican National Convention in August, Rubio again took a swig. “I think I just drank Clint Eastwood’s water,” he said. “Thank you.”

AP and Getty photos.

But six months later, it was Rubio’s water, not Eastwood’s histrionics, that would steal the show.

On Feb. 12, 2013, Rubio delivered the official Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union, his highest-profile gig to date — and one meant to showcase the gifts of the party’s fresh-faced talent. But his turn in the national spotlight was overshadowed by his awkward break for water, which launched a thousand Internet memes. On Twitter, it was called #Watergate, and it has remained a defining moment of his career since.

Rubio took it with good humor. In one television appearance following the rebuttal, he ostentatiously chugged from a bottle.

The next month, arriving backstage at CPAC 2013, he asked for a five-gallon jug as a prop. No jug was available, so he took to the stage and, with both hands, scooped up three glasses of water from behind the podium. “Let me just say I love the hospitality, but this is an exaggeration,” he joked. The crowd loved it.

But 15 minutes later, water once again knocked him off his game as he reached down for a sip, and the CPAC audience broke into applause. “Thank you. Never in the history of the world has water been so popular; I appreciate it,” said Rubio sarcastically. “Never. Let me tell you. No,” he continued, but then paused, lowered his head, raised his hand to his face and took a deep breath before getting back on track.

The water thing had not gone away — and it still hasn’t.

As Rubio’s standing in the 2016 nomination fight has improved, Donald Trump has seized on the senator’s bodily functions, repeatedly calling attention both to Rubio’s drinking and to his sweating. “Rubio, I've never seen a young guy sweat that much. He's drinking water, water, water,” Trump told ABC News in September. “I never saw anything like this with him, with the water.”

On Fox News, Rubio responded to the attacks, "I drink water. So what? And I only sweat when it’s hot."

But people who have worked with Rubio said sweat has also been a distraction for him. “You hear Donald Trump make fun of him for it. But he’s onto something,” said Rubio’s longtime associate. “I don’t think Marco sweats that much more. But Marco thinks he does. He’s always wiping, wiping, wiping sweat — even if he’s not sweating. It can drive you crazy if you’re watching him closely.”

The person who has staffed CPACs at which Rubio has spoken agreed with Trump’s assessment. “He sweats quite a bit, and when you sit down under television lights it gets very hot,” said the person, who recalled the issue arising when Rubio did not have water during his speech at the 2012 gathering. “Not only was he very thirsty, but he was under very bright lights. … Beads of sweat were just popping up on his forehead.”

In private, water remains a preoccupation of Rubio’s campaign.

At one stop along the campaign trail this fall, Rubio’s advance team miffed organizers who have hosted multiple presidential candidates by dictating accommodations down to the type of vessel the senator’s water would be served in: a stemless glass, rather than a stemmed one or a water bottle.

“Huckabee didn’t need water,” said an event organizer, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld and the event not be made identifiable. “It was the first time that glassware entered into one of these events.”

In public, Rubio has continued to work to make water an endearing totem of his public persona — one that, if all goes according to plan, could occupy a place similar to Ronald Reagan’s beloved jelly beans in the American imagination.

At the second Republican debate in September, he found room for it in his opening statement. “I’m honored to be at the Reagan Library, at a place that honors the man who inspired not just my interest in public service, but also our love for country. And I’m also aware that California has a drought, and so that’s why I made sure I brought my own water,” he said, brandishing a bottle of it.

At the end of a September campaign video in which Rubio answers a series of personal questions while being tossed a football, he is asked, “Most important preparation for a big game or a big speech?” Rubio responds, “Make sure that there’s water nearby,” as he catches a bottle.

In a message that plays at the end of videos on his campaign’s YouTube account, Rubio speaks straight to the camera and says, “Make sure to click below to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get our campaign’s latest videos.” After a pause, the senator who has risen so quickly through the rungs of American politics says, “Go ahead, I’ll wait,” and reaches down for a bottle of water, taking a swig.

Marc Caputo contributed to this report.