It is an episode that Marco Rubio had hoped was long forgotten – a federal investigation and top-to-toe examination of the Florida GOP’s financial trickery at the end of the last decade that saw the state’s party chairman jailed for grand theft and money laundering and another senior Republican facing corruption charges.



Rubio, who was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009, emerged unscathed as agents from the US attorney’s office, Internal Revenue Service, FBI and the Florida department of law enforcement examined a number of senior party figures.

But now that he is running for president, and enjoying a popularity surge that placed him top of the crowded field of Republican White House hopefuls in last week’s CNN/ORC poll, questions over Rubio’s fiscal propriety appear to be coming back to haunt his campaign. Opponents will seize on his misuse of a party-issued credit card, and separate accusations that he treated hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to two conservative action committees he established before he became speaker as a personal slush fund.

“There’s no other way of putting it than saying he raised money to travel and to go for fine-dining meals when the purpose of those committees was to help elect candidates running for public office,” said Christian Ulvert, a senior Democratic adviser who was the opposition party’s communications chief in Florida when Rubio was speaker.

“If it’s 25 to 35K over a year you’d be saying is that a big deal, and rightfully so. But when you’re talking around $300,000 dollars that’s a different story. That’s a big chunk of change. It’s clear there was lack of accountability and fiscal discipline.”

Set up ostensibly for “education” and “to support state and local candidates who espouse conservative government policies”, the committees, according to investigations by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, paid tens of thousands of dollars in “reimbursements for expenses” to Rubio and several family members, another $150,000 for “office/operating and administrative costs”, up to $50,000 in vague credit card charges covering travel, food and lodging, and many thousands more in “consultancy fees”.

Former Florida governor Charlie Crist, who lost to Rubio in the 2010 US Senate election, accused his opponent of enriching himself through private “slush funds”. Rubio’s then campaign adviser Todd Harris admitted that the bookkeeping “was not always perfect”.

During the separate federal investigation, which began in 2010, little more than a year after Rubio left office, IRS agents looked closely at lavish personal spending that appeared on American Express cards issued by the state GOP to Rubio, then-chairman Jim Greer and other state party leaders.

Tax exemption rules for political parties limit spending to legitimate political activities including fundraising. Yet more than $100,000 in charges that appeared on Rubio’s bills during his two years as speaker included bills for groceries, liquor, a $10,000 family vacation to Georgia and some expensive car repairs. The image-conscious politician even splurged $134 on a haircut at a prestigious Miami salon.

When the Herald and Times inquiry exposed the details, Rubio acknowledged the spending as a misunderstanding and paid back more than $16,000.

“I was as diligent as possible to ensure the party did not pay for items that were unrelated to party business,” Rubio said in a written statement at the time. “There was no formal process provided by the party regarding personal charges.”

Rubio also pointed out that the damage to his family minivan was caused by parking attendants while he was at a political event, and that the party had agreed to cover some of the cost.

The IRS inquiry quietly went away, leaving Rubio free to fight for and win election to the US Senate later that year. An IRS spokesman told the Guardian he could not comment on individual investigations.

Senior party allies under scrutiny alongside Rubio, however, were not so fortunate.

After a lengthy investigation, Greer, chair of the Florida Republican Party from 2006 until he resigned in 2010, pleaded guilty to fraud and theft charges over a crooked fundraising scheme. He served 15 months of an 18-month sentence.

Ray Sansom, Rubio’s successor as speaker who resigned in 2009, faced grand theft and conspiracy charges for misappropriation of tax dollars in an unrelated episode before prosecutors dropped all charges in 2011.

Greer was widely seen as the scapegoat for the party’s financial scandals during the Rubio era. Before accepting the plea deal, he hinted he knew where the bodies were buried. He promised his 2013 trial would be “a Shakespearean play where everyone dies in the end” and speculation was rife that Rubio, on a list of 117 potential witnesses in the case, was among the leading party figures whose secrets Greer was about to reveal.

In his book The Chairman, released shortly before he was freed from jail last summer, Greer accused Rubio of hypocrisy for calling for audits to secure greater oversight of state spending while at the same time he was spending freely. He described Rubio as “smart, ruthless and always scheming”.

To Rubio’s camp, which already appears to be weary of the renewed interest in his fiscal activities, all of this is old news. In reply to specific questions from the Guardian about Rubio’s credit card spending and financial controversies over his tenure as Florida House speaker, press secretary Brooke Sammon replied only that her boss “addresses much of this in his first book”.

In March, in a Business Insider report, Sammon said the stories were “nothing more than proven inaccuracies and false attacks from liberals trying to distract from Senator Rubio’s optimistic vision for our country in the 21st century”.

While the Florida GOP did release some of the credit card bills, Rubio has always steadfastly refused to reveal those from the time before he became speaker, calling them “an internal party matter.” In his book, An American Son, a chronicle of his early political career, Rubio denied any intentional wrongdoing, and during a 2012 interview with Fox News he explained that he would directly pay off the personal expenses each month as the bills arrived, and that the party never paid them. The issue, he insisted, “was totally resolved years ago”.

Yet the questions are certain to keep coming up as the 2016 candidate’s closets are rifled through for skeletons. Another test will come over his close friendship with David Rivera, a controversial former member of the Florida House with whom he owned a house in Tallahassee shared during their time in office together. The property was in foreclosure in 2010 until Rubio made a payment to clear mortgage arrears. But the three-bedroom house, and Rubio’s friendship with a disgraced politician under federal and state ethics investigations for alleged illegal campaign activities, remains a liability. Sammon would not address a question about the Rubio-Rivera relationship.

The controversies from Rubio’s bumpy two years as speaker also run to his handling of the state’s purse strings. He was dogged by criticism over an upscale refurbishment of his suite of offices and members-only areas in the state capitol, questions over pay raises for his senior staff, and suspicion over helping to steer millions in state money to a university at which he accepted a position as a well-paid part-time professor of politics when he left office.

He also fell out with others in his own party, especially then-governor Crist, over finances, and he had two committee chairman stripped of their authority for voting against his vision on property insurance reform.

“It was Marco’s way or no way,” Ulvert said. “As is true for all Republican colleagues in the legislature, they want to say they’re fiscal conservatives but it’s in convenience only. They go around the state parading those terms, but when you look at their spending habits, it’s far from it.”

Rubio pats fellow candidate Ben Carson on the back before speaking at a campaign event sponsored by Iowa senator Joni Ernst on Saturday. Photograph: Dave Kaup/Reuters

It’s going to come down to his oratory and story-telling skills outplaying his laundry list of issues and controversies Christian Ulvert

The damage to Rubio from such scrutiny remains to be seen. “As simple as it sounds, it’s going to come down to his oratory and storytelling skills outplaying his laundry list of issues and controversies,” Ulvert said.

“Can he weather his Florida record? The intensity is going to grow and all these things will be played out on the national stage. The problemf is he’s going to spend the final months leading up to the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary defending his record and using his fine oratory skills as a defense mechanism rather than as an ability to sell his vision.”

Support for Rubio, meanwhile, comes from a surprising quarter. Dan Gelber, who as leader of the minority Democrats in the Florida House often faced down the speaker, said his one-time political opponent and friend was mostly following financial policies set by his party, and could not be singled out for criticism.

“The Republican stewardship of Florida was a disaster but I can’t attach it all to him,” Gelber said. “Speakers are normally forgotten very quickly, but Marco is the exception rather than the rule in terms of future political success. He clearly has a lot of ingredients to make a run.

“Republicans seem to flirt with a lot of candidates, then nominate the guy you want in your golf foursome. Under that metric I would vote on Jeb Bush but not count Marco Rubio out.”