Alexandra Glorioso

alexandra.glorioso@naplesnews.com; 239-435-3442

TAMPA — The closest U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio will come in the final weeks before the election to campaign with Donald Trump occurred during the state GOP victory dinner over the weekend. And Trump wasn’t even there.

In Trump’s absence, running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence headlined the Saturday dinner in Tampa where Rubio was also a guest speaker.

It fell at the end of a grueling week for the Trump campaign, one in which the Republican presidential candidate spent three days in the must-win state of Florida, including one appearance less than a 30-minute drive from Rubio.

This weekend’s state GOP dinner, a staple during presidential election years, kicks off the final weeks of the general election campaign. While past GOP presidential candidates have made Florida appearances with fellow Republicans on the ballot, Rubio has made the rare decision not to campaign with Trump.

Marco Rubio sticking by Donald Trump despite "offensive" remarks

The resolution from Rubio, once a fierce primary opponent of Trump, came after the fallout from the release of a 2005 video that featured Trump talking lewdly about being able to grope women because he’s “a star” and his attempts to have sex with a married woman. Trump, who apologized for the comments, also denied accusations from women that he forced himself on them.

Rubio made the call on Tuesday after Republicans around the country pulled their support from Trump. Several Republican officials said the move was at the very least out of the ordinary.

“Usually in presidential years, you will see elected officials on the state, local and national level in joint appearances with the presidential candidate,” U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said.

But as Gov. Mitt Romney’s former spokesman, Ryan Williams pointed out, this move is more of the same for an atypical presidential race.

“It’s unusual, but not this year,” Williams said. “Senate candidates in other states are running their own races and not campaigning with the top of the ticket.”

What separates Rubio from other Senate candidates is that the last time he stood on a stage with Trump, they were fiery opponents. And then Trump went on to humiliate Rubio, beating him in 66 out of 67 counties in his home state by nearly a 19-point margin.

Now the two candidates need each other, which puts Rubio in an ever-more awkward position where he is unable to forcibly reject Trump but also unable to fully embrace him.

“It’s sort of like magnets,” Johnson said while describing the dynamics of the two campaigns. “If you have them turned right, they come together and then turn them again, they repel.”

Rubio can’t afford to alienate the nearly 46 percent of Republicans who voted for Trump in the presidential primary. Yet, embracing Trump too closely runs the risk of turning off swing voters, women and Hispanics, who favor Rubio more than Trump.

"Republicans are in a no-win situation this year," said Charlie Cook, editor of The Cook Political Report. "Embrace Trump, offend moderate and swing voters. Disavow Trump, you offend your party base that supports him. To the extent that a Republican candidate can 'run their own race' neither embracing or disavowing Trump, that minimizes fallout in a competitive race."

Trump needs help in Miami-Dade, the only county he lost in the presidential primary. In the five congressional districts that include at least some voters in Miami-Dade, Trump did significantly worse, earning, on average, 31 percent of the vote, according to state Divisions of Elections data.

About 72 percent of the registered Republicans in the county, the most populous in the state, are Hispanic, nearly all of whom are of Cuban decent. He also needs support from more traditional Republicans, who are backing Rubio, Johnson said.

Joe Gruters, Trump’s Florida campaign co-chair, acknowledged there were some “hurt feelings” between the candidates since they ran against each other.

“They both took a lot of shots at each other in the primary,” Gruters said.

There is “a chance” for ticket splitting with Rubio and Trump, he said, but voters who are attracted to each candidate will realize that “electing Trump without Rubio would cost us in D.C. and electing Rubio without Trump will cost us in D.C.”

In a normal campaign, Rubio and Trump would be working in concert, Republicans say.

On the Sunday before the election in 2000, President George W. Bush and Rep. Bill McCollum, then a U.S. Senate candidate, hit four cities together, including Miami and Tampa. On the Sunday before the election in 2004, President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, then a candidate, hit three media markets: Tampa, Miami and Gainesville.

About a week before the 2012 election, Gov. Mitt Romney went on a “victory tour” with U.S. Senate candidate Connie Mack, Gov. Jeb Bush and Rubio, where they stopped in Coral Gables, Jacksonville and Tampa.

This year, for the first time since 1998, there’s not a Bush joining the general election campaign trail for the top of the ticket. And in fact, the communications director for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign joined an anti-Trump super PAC, Our Principles, which has raised more than $18 million since January.

While the Republican Party in Florida has been tasked with opening offices and providing ground game infrastructure for Trump in the state, it has been functioning with significantly fewer resources than during the last presidential election. In 2012 the Republican National Committee gave the state party $8.9 million, according to reports it filed with the federal elections committee. In 2016 the national committee transferred $1.8 million, the records show.

Chairman Blaise Ingoglia said the presidential ground game operation wasn’t hurt by the lack of resources because it had been implementing voter registration efforts over the last two years and Trump is inspiring grass-roots efforts across the state.

“We have an amazing volunteer army that are passionate about getting Republicans elected, a lot of them very passionate about Donald Trump in a way that we haven’t seen in decades,” Ingoglia said.

However, if the GOP Victory dinner and the preceding quarterly meeting are any indication, ensuring Rubio’s re-election appears to be the priority.

On Friday, during the county chair meeting, St. Johns County GOP Chairman Bill Korach told party leaders he is having a hard time finding party-appointed field staffers who are supporting Trump. His comment inspired several other county chairs to report they are having the same problem.

While Trump lags in polls, which pre-date his comments about groping women, Rubio has successfully inoculated himself from the controversies of the presidential candidate. In the latest polls, which were published after the video, Rubio is up by 5 points.

But Florida remains a highly competitive state in both the presidential and U.S. Senate races.

"Rubio has handled this race in an optimal way, but it is still close for that same reason," Cook said.

Pence opened his remarks at the Saturday dinner by linking the two candidates and then praising the senator.

We are “just 24 days away from when we will re-elect Sen. Marco Rubio to the United States Senate, and we will elect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States of America.”

“It’s a joy to be with Marco because we’ve become friends," Pence told the crowd. "I told him there was only one decision he ever made in his life I disagreed with, but fortunately, he reversed that, and he’s running for re-election.”

Rubio opened his comments by calling Pence an “incredible choice,” seeming to reference his vice presidential selection. He then quickly moved on to make the case for his own campaign, never once mentioning Trump.

“Let there be no doubt that we are an extraordinary country,” Rubio said. He urged his listeners to not believe all the “bad news that’s out there.”