Inside The Move to Maneuver Marco Rubio Into the VP Slot
Inside The Move to Maneuver Marco Rubio Into the VP Slot
Trump: ‘Marco has this residency problem.’
DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN STAFF has assembled a dozen dossiers on possible running mates, but they largely remain unopened by the presidential candidate, who’s conducting his own vetting process by asking friends, consultants, and insiders whom they think he should pick and why.
In these discussions, two names consistently rise to the top: Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, who was this weekend the subject of a flattering story in the New York Times and has been pushed by Don Jr.
But Rubio has strong support in Trump’s circle of advisers, especially among those with Florida ties. There’s just one problem.
Trump and Rubio are both Florida Men.
The Twelfth Amendment says that if the president and vice president inhabit the same state when the states’ electors cast their ballots (that’s on December 17 this year), the ticket could lose its Electoral College votes from that state (Florida has 30, 11 percent of the total needed to win the White House).
It’s called the “favorite sons” prohibition.
“Marco has this residency problem,” is how Trump describes it to others.
And boy, does he.
Putting Rubio on the ticket could trigger lawsuits, force the senator’s resignation, and potentially lead to two simultaneous U.S. Senate races in Florida, which hasn’t happened in the state since 1936 (both incumbents died in office that year). The question is whether Rubio on the ticket is too much of a headache and turnoff for Trump, or whether the legal chaos is perversely attractive.
TRUMP IS STRONGLY CONSIDERING Rubio because he’s keenly aware Rubio is fluent in Spanish, is the only Hispanic on his shortlist, and is attractive to the establishment donors his cash-hungry campaign needs. A member of the Senate’s intelligence and foreign relations committees, Rubio grew close to Trump during his presidency and served as a key Latin America adviser shaping Cuba and Venezuela policy. In 2019, two sources told me at the time, Rubio successfully lobbied Trump to ignore more hawkish voices in his administration who wanted the president to consider military action in Venezuela against strongman Nicolás Maduro.
“Trump respects Marco, and if it wasn’t for the residency issue, Marco would probably get it,” one Republican who spoke recently to Trump said. “He [Trump] is concerned about it. He said Rubio’s people have a memo showing it’s not a problem, but I’m not sure he’s convinced. And he’s damn sure not moving.”
Asked about this “memo,” Rubio advisers and those close to Trump’s campaign said they were unaware of the document.
Trump could change his residence back to New York (where he’s staying in Trump Tower during his trial) or to New Jersey (where he frequently summers at his golf course in Bedminster). But he doesn’t want to leave Florida. The state has no income tax and is so thoroughly Republican-controlled that he doesn’t have to worry about any local politicians causing trouble for him. Plus: Why should Trump move to accommodate his vice presidential pick? That’s a cuck move, for sure.
Moving residences is for betas and running mates.
COULD IT WORK? Probably. Rubio would have to establish residency or “inhabitance” out of state if he wants a shot on Trump’s ticket. He’s willing to do that, according to those familiar with his thinking, just as Dick Cheney did in 2000 when he moved in July of that year from Texas to Wyoming so that he could join then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s ticket. A trio of Texas residents sued in federal court, but Bush-Cheney prevailed.
“It is very hard for anyone to be able to sue and challenge the electors’ votes before the fact, because the candidate could always establish inhabitancy before the electors vote. And after they vote, it is really a matter for Congress to determine,” said Derek T. Muller, a University of Notre Dame law professor and an expert in election law.
Another expert in election law, Ohio State University’s Edward B. Foley, agreed that Congress would ultimately decide the issue of Rubio’s inhabitancy under the Electoral Count Reform Act, which made it harder to successfully object to electoral votes.
“It’s up to Congress to sustain the objection and it takes a majority vote in both chambers to sustain one,” Foley said. “So you tell me the political likelihood that the Senate would disqualify Rubio from being vice president when he was a senator before he ran for vice president. I don’t think this is really enforceable in court. I think this is enforceable only in Congress.”
Foley said he could nevertheless see officials in states like Colorado, which unsuccessfully attempted to block Trump from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Disqualification Clause, try to challenge a Trump-Rubio ticket under the Twelfth Amendment.
BUT MAYBE RUBIO COULD JUST . . . move? Re-elected in 2022, Rubio could theoretically move out of state, remain senator, and return to the U.S. Senate if the Trump-Rubio ticket loses in November. That’s under a strict reading of the constitutional clause specifying senators must “be an Inhabitant” of their state “when elected”—it doesn’t say senators are prohibited from moving out of their state after they’re elected, Rubio allies say, although they expect lawsuits will follow if he changes residency but tries to stay in the Senate.
But there are non-legal considerations, too: the gravitational pull of Trump’s resentments toward Gov. Ron DeSantis. Under Florida law, DeSantis would get to pick Rubio’s “temporary” replacement until “the next general election.”
“Trump doesn’t want Ron to get a Senate pick,” said another Trump adviser. “And if Trump really wants Rubio on the ticket, he’ll want to make sure Ron’s pick is as short-lasting as possible.”
So if Rubio is offered a spot on Trump’s ticket, Trump might force him to announce his almost-immediate resignation from the seat to give voters a chance to decide his replacement November 5, when Sen. Rick Scott is seeking re-election.
A third Trump confidant was more circumspect: “[Trump] prefers that the people get to vote. That’s his consideration.” (DeSantis and Trump met to bury the hatchet on Sunday for the first time since DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign, but Trump’s antipathy remains. And DeSantis, unhappy Rubio endorsed Trump, doesn’t have a great relationship with either of his state’s senators.)
Though in his third term, Rubio advisers say he’s not wedded to the Senate and he might run for governor in 2026 anyway. The chances of that would increase if he resigned office or if Trump lost and Republicans failed to take control of the Senate.
SO LET’S TALK ABOUT LOGISTICS. If Rubio announced he was quitting this year, what’s the drop-dead date for the state to get his seat onto the general election ballot…
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Read the rest of Inside the move to maneuver Marco Rubio into the VP slot, here.