As Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, gained momentum in the primary race versus Governor Crist, John Dowless told the St. Pete Times that Rubio”s stock raised high enough to pose a real challenge for the nomination. Excerpts from the St. Pete Times article, With Marco Rubio raising nearly $1 million, it’s game on in Senate race vs. Gov. Charlie Crist, are posted below.
Charlie Crist has a real race on his hands.
Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio says that in the last three months he raised nearly $1 million for his underdog campaign for the U.S. Senate. That’s a huge improvement over Rubio’s previous fundraising and puts a big crack in the aura of inevitability surrounding Gov. Crist’s U.S. Senate campaign……
But Rubio’s long-shot candidacy for the Republican nomination has been generating growing excitement among grass roots activists and conservative national media figures skeptical of Crist’s sunny populism……county Republican parties across the state have been holding “straw polls” with activists overwhelmingly supporting Rubio over Crist…..The hefty fundraising quarter establishes Rubio’s viability and is likely to spur more interest in the 38-year-old Cuban-American from Miami. Rubio still has huge hurdles in taking on a popular governor backed by much of the Republican U.S. Senate leadership.
“Nobody’s writing off Rubio any longer, but I think he’s still in a let’s-wait-and-see position,” said Republican consultant John Dowless of Orlando. “He has a long way to go because Florida is not cheap to run a campaign in.”