Marco Rubio Officially Running For President

Marco Rubio announced this morning that he will seek the 2016 Republican nomination saying that he’s “'uniquely qualified” to talk about the future, according to the AP. Marco, 43, is expected to leverage his youth and Tea Party credentials against more centrist political rivals, arguing that he can offer a clear choice for voters, especially in a runoff against Hillary Clinton, the favored Democratic candidate. Rubio, who is Cuban-American, will give his first official campaign speech at Freedom Tower, a Miami building symbolic to refugees who fled the Castro regime in the early 1960s.

Rubio has reportedly been building has campaign for over a year. He’s commissioned extensive polling in primary and battleground states, according to the National Journal. In the last few months, he’s built a small team with solid presidential campaign credentials, including Rich Beeson, the political director of Romney’s 2012 campaign. He is also likely to pick up Spencer Zwick, Romney’s former finance chairman.

“Senator Rubio is starting to build a campaign team and he has a message that resonates," Zwick told the Washington Post. "I like him a lot and I look forward to getting to know him more in the coming weeks.”

In the money race, Rubio recently formed his first Political Action Committee. He’s courted big donors for years, and may be getting as much as ten million in seed money from a single backer. As the Latin Times reported last week, Rubio’s staff are trying to help him fundraise by setting him apart from Republican rivals by arguing that he has a real shot at winning. While he’s behind on the fundraising front, his staffers argue that he is a demographic gem. Here’s the case, as made by seasoned Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who’s expected to join Rubio’s team.

"A Republican nominee is going to need to be somewhere in the mid-forties, or better, among Hispanic voters," Ayres said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Rubio is "extraordinarily talented," he added, saying that the candidate could be "transformational" in broadening the GOP base to Latinos and young people. Rubio's digital team, unveiled this morning, seemed to drive that point home, targeting millennials with tweets that included the hashtag NewAmericanCentury, a neoconservative slogan.

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