Marco rubio biography for kids
In October , The Washington Post reported that Rubio's previous statements that his parents were forced to leave Cuba in after Fidel Castro came to power were falsehoods. His parents actually left Cuba in , during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. According to the Post , "[in] Florida, being connected to the post-revolution exile community gives a politician cachet that could never be achieved by someone identified with the pre-Castro exodus, a group sometimes viewed with suspicion.
Rubio asserted that his parents intended to return to Cuba in the s. He added that his mother took his two elder siblings back to Cuba in with the intention of living there permanently his father remained behind in Miami "wrapping up the family's matters" , but the nation's move toward communism caused the family to change its plans.
Rubio stated that "[the] essence of my family story is why they came to America in the first place; and why they had to stay. Rubio has three siblings: older brother Mario, older sister Barbara married to Orlando Cicilia , and younger sister Veronica formerly married to entertainer Carlos Ponce. Growing up, his family was Catholic , though from age 8 to age 11 he and his family attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while living in Las Vegas.
Marco rubio biography for kids
During those years in Nevada, his father worked as a bartender at Sam's Town Hotel and his mother as a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino. He received his first communion as a Catholic in before moving back to Miami with his family a year later. He was confirmed and later married in the Catholic Church. He paid off those loans in While studying law, Rubio interned for U.
He also worked on Republican senator Bob Dole 's presidential campaign. In April , two years after finishing law school, Rubio was elected to a seat as city commissioner for West Miami. He became a member of the Florida House of Representatives in early In late , a special election was called to fill the seat for the th House District in the Florida House of Representatives , representing Miami.
He campaigned as a moderate, advocating tax cuts and early childhood education. Rubio placed second in the Republican primary on December 14, , but won the runoff election for the Republican nomination, defeating Angel Zayon a television and radio reporter who was popular with Cuban exiles by just 64 votes. In November , Rubio was reelected unopposed.
In , he was reelected to a second term unopposed. In , he was reelected to a fourth term unopposed. Rubio spent almost nine years in the Florida House of Representatives. Since the Florida legislative session officially lasted only sixty days, he spent about half of each year in Miami, where he practiced law, first at a law firm that specialized in land use and zoning until when he took a position with Broad and Cassel, a Miami law and lobbying firm though state law precluded him from engaging in lobbying or introducing legislation on behalf of the firm's clients.
When Rubio took his seat in the legislature in Tallahassee in January , voters in Florida had recently approved a constitutional amendment on term limits. This created openings for new legislative leaders due to many senior incumbents having to retire. According to an article in National Journal , Rubio also gained an extra advantage in that regard, because he was sworn in early due to the special election, and he would take advantage of these opportunities to join the GOP leadership.
Later in , the majority leader of the House, Mike Fasano, promoted Rubio to be one of two majority whips. National Journal described that position as typically requiring much arm-twisting, but said Rubio took a different approach that relied more on persuading legislators and less on coercing them. Fasano resigned in September as majority leader of the House due to disagreements with the House speaker, and the speaker passed over Rubio to appoint a more experienced replacement for Fasano.
Rubio volunteered to work on redistricting, which he accomplished by dividing the state into five regions, then working individually with the lawmakers involved, and this work helped to cement his relationships with GOP leaders. He persuaded Speaker Byrd to restructure the job of majority leader, so that legislative wrangling would be left to the whip's office, and Rubio would become the main spokesperson for the House GOP.
According to National Journal , during this period Rubio did not entirely adhere to doctrinaire conservative principles, and some colleagues described him as a centrist "who sought out Democrats and groups that don't typically align with the GOP". He co-sponsored legislation that would have let farmworkers sue growers in state court if they were shortchanged on pay, and co-sponsored a bill for giving in-state tuition rates to the children of undocumented immigrants.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks , he voiced suspicion about expanding police detention powers and helped defeat a GOP bill that would have required colleges to increase reporting to the state about foreign students. Additionally, an office in the executive branch compiled a longer list of spending requests by legislators, including Rubio, as did the non-profit group Florida TaxWatch.
Many of those listed items were for health and social programs that Rubio has described as "the kind of thing that legislators would get attacked on if we didn't fund them". A report by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald said that some of Rubio's spending requests dovetailed with his personal interests. A spokesman for Rubio has said that the items in question helped the whole county, that Rubio did not lobby to get them approved, that the hospital money was necessary and non-controversial, and that Rubio is "a limited-government conservative Ross dropped out.
He was sworn in a year later, in November He became the first Cuban American to be speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and would remain speaker until November When he was chosen as future speaker in , Rubio delivered a speech to the Florida House in which he asked members to look in their desks, where they each found a hardcover book titled Innovative Ideas For Florida's Future ; but the book was blank because it had not yet been written, and Rubio told his colleagues that they would fill in the pages together with the help of ordinary Floridians.
In , after traveling around the state and talking with citizens, and compiling their ideas, Rubio published the book. The National Journal called this book "the centerpiece of Rubio's early speakership". About 24 of the "ideas" became law, while another 10 were partially enacted. Among the items from his book that became law were multiple-year car registrations, a requirement that high schools provide more vocational courses, and an expanded voucher-like school-choice program.
Rubio's defenders, and some critics, point out that nationwide economic difficulties overlapped with much of Rubio's speakership, and so funding new legislative proposals became difficult. Rubio hired 18 Bush aides, leading capitol insiders to say the speaker's suite was "the governor's office in exile". An article in National Journal described Rubio's style as being very different from Bush's; where Bush was a very assertive manager of affairs in Tallahassee, Rubio's style was to delegate certain powers, relinquish others, and invite political rivals into his inner circle.
As the incoming speaker, he decided to open a private dining room for legislators, which he said would give members more privacy, free from being pursued by lobbyists, though the expense led to a public relations problem. In , Florida enacted into law limitations upon the authority of the state government to take private property, in response to the Supreme Court decision in Kelo v.
City of New London which took a broad view of governmental power to take private property under eminent domain. This state legislation had been proposed by a special committee chaired by Rubio prior to his speakership. Rubio and Crist clashed frequently. Their sharpest clash involved the governor's initiative to expand casino gambling in Florida.
Rubio sued Crist for bypassing the Florida Legislature in order to make a deal with the Seminole Tribe. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Rubio and blocked the deal. Rubio also was a critic of Crist's strategy to fight climate change through an executive order creating new automobile and utility emissions standards. Rubio accused Crist of imposing "European-style big government mandates", and the legislature under Rubio's leadership weakened the impact of Crist's climate change initiative.
Rubio said that Crist's approach would harm consumers by driving up utility bills without having much effect upon the environment, and that a better approach would be to promote biofuel e. His proposal passed the House, but was opposed by Governor Crist and Florida Senate Republicans, who said that the increase in sales tax would disproportionately affect the poor.
Legislators called it the largest tax cut in Florida's history up until then. At the time, Republican anti-tax activist Grover Norquist described Rubio as "the most pro-taxpayer legislative leader in the country". As Speaker, Rubio "aggressively tried to push Florida to the political right ", according to NBC News , and frequently clashed with the Florida Senate , which was run by more moderate Republicans, and with then-Governor Charlie Crist, a centrist Republican at the time.
However, his campaign never picked up the momentum he had hoped for and he dropped out of the race after a disappointing defeat in his home state of Florida. He re-entered the race for his previous Senate seat and was re-elected in Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, on May 28, He is one of four children born to Cuban immigrants. Both of his parents worked hard to support the family.
His father spent many years as a bartender and his mother held a number of service industry and retail jobs. In , his parents became naturalized U. For Rubio, he became interested in public service early on. He has told the press, "I gained an interest in politics and history from my uncle, who would read books and newspapers out loud to us.
Rubio spent part of his childhood in Las Vegas, Nevada, but he returned to Florida in the s with his family. He graduated in and earned a football scholarship to Tarkio College in Missouri. Rubio left the school after a year and eventually enrolled at the University of Florida. After completing his bachelor's degree there in , he earned a law degree from the University of Miami in Rubio began his life in public service in by winning a seat on the West Miami City Commission.
Before long, he made his ascent into state politics. Rubio was victorious in his bid for the Florida House of Representatives in He quickly established himself as a political force with the legislature, becoming the majority leader in and then speaker of the House three years later. As the speaker, Rubio launched an ambitious campaign to generate ways to improve and reform the state government.
He held a series of gatherings around the state to hear and collect ideas from Florida residents. Culling from these suggestions, Rubio put together a proposal called " Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future. One of these reforms, however, didn't survive the political process. The fiscally conservative Rubio had lobbied for property tax reforms and for instituting a sales tax increase.
Analysts initially viewed Rubio as the underdog, and he trailed the better-known Crist in the polls at first. Some of his ideas became law, but many did not. Marco Rubio started his own law firm in In Marco Rubio announced that instead of running for re-election to the U. Senate he would seek the opportunity to run in the presidential election, as a Republican candidate for the nomination.
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