By Alexis Levinson
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Andover, Minn.
— Exactly one month into the Republican primary season, Marco Rubio finally won
a state.
The win came here in Minnesota, where Rubio handily
bested Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, who finished in a distant third despite
dominating most of the night’s other contests. It was the lone bright spot in
an otherwise bleak evening for the Florida senator’s campaign.
Super Tuesday was never expected to yield great success
for Rubio. The glut of Southern states voting, several of them with high vote
thresholds for earning delegates, was always thought to favor Cruz — who had
focused hard on the South — and Trump, whose poll numbers are consistently
strong there.
Until this afternoon, Rubio’s campaign had been careful
to manage expectations. Super Tuesday, they pointed out, was supposed to be
Cruz’s big moment, not theirs. Going forward, as the race moved out of the
South, they argued that the map would get worse for Cruz and better for them.
As late as Tuesday morning, Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan even warned
donors that the night could be a rout, per Politico.
But then, this afternoon, the campaign’s tone changed.
Coming off the momentum from his strong debate performance last week, and
capitalizing on the fact that he is gathering support as the alternative to
Trump, Rubio himself suddenly started sounding very optimistic about his
chances, raising expectations in a gaggle with reporters.
“I certainly think we’re going to do a lot better than
we’re expected to do tonight. . . . It’s a night where we’re going to get a lot
of delegates and be ready to fight next Saturday and beyond as we head into
Florida and the winner-take-all [states],” Rubio said, according to a
transcript sent out by the campaign. He singled out Minnesota and Virginia, in
particular, as states where the campaign felt “great.”
Instead, Rubio fell short almost everywhere, even in the
states where he’d seemed poised to do well.
He lost narrowly in Virginia, finishing three points
behind Trump. In Oklahoma, where the campaign had seen a glimmer of hope in the
final stretch, he finished third, two points behind Trump and six points behind
Cruz. In Texas, Alabama, and Vermont, he failed to meet the 20-percent
threshold required to net even a single delegate.
All of those losses were apparent by the time Minnesota,
the second to last state to be called, gave him Rubio his one and only win. It
was the payoff of a calculated investment by the campaign.
About two and a half weeks ago, the Rubio campaign opened
up an office in the Minneapolis suburbs and dispatched three paid aides to man
it — making them the only Republican campaign in the state with non-volunteer
staff. Already they had a strong team in place. One Minnesota Republican
described Rubio’s state chairman, Jeff Johnson, as the man behind what may be
the state’s best voter-turnout operation. And Rubio had already made one stop
here in the past week before his appearance today, which was his final stop in
a Super Tuesday state.
There was a reason the Rubio campaign bet its precious
resources here: the demographics of the state favored him. “I think we’re
similar to Iowa in many ways,” says Johnson, invoking the state where Rubio
pulled off a surprisingly strong third-place finish. In particular, Minnesota
resembles those suburban areas in Iowa, such as Ankeny, where Rubio focused his
efforts. And the state’s polite affect aligns with Rubio’s generally sunny
temperament rather than Trump’s blustery bravado.
“The whole Trump persona — he’s kind of like a stand up
comedian who keeps insulting the audience. Rude, and so totally un-Minnesotan.
Just antithetical to our political culture,” says John Hinderaker, who runs the
Center for the American Experiment and co-founded the conservative blog Power Line.
But even with those built-in advantages, Rubio couldn’t
be sure of a win going into Minnesota. Caucuses, in general, can be hard to
predict because so much depends on turnout. And this was the first year that
Minnesota has scheduled its caucuses early enough on the calendar to make a
real difference in the nominating process, so no one knew quite what to expect
— one Minnesota Republican said his caucus site was preparing for anywhere
between 1,000 and 3,000 voters.
Turnout more than doubled the previous record. With 92
percent of the vote in, over 111,000 people had caucused. But new voters, and
even some who had voted before, did not seem to realize what they were getting
themselves into. At a caucus site in St. Cloud, about an hour northwest of
Minneapolis, people seemed flummoxed that the process required more than just
walking in, voting, and leaving. One couple with a baby got up and left when it
became clear they would have to sit for a while before they could vote; another
couple walked out when they learned they could not caucus for Democrats at a
Republican caucus site.
Rubio emerged from the process with a solid win. He
finished with 37 percent of the vote, ahead of Cruz at 29 percent and Trump at
21 percent. But on the raw numbers, he won’t have much to show for it because
of the proportional allotment of Minnesota’s 38 delegates. Despite beating Cruz
convincingly in the popular vote, he’ll pick up only one or two more delegates
than the Texas senator.
The raw math was an overarching problem for Rubio
tonight. He’ll get no delegates from Texas, Vermont, and Alabama. And in
Virginia — where he did well, but still finished a close second behind Trump —
he’ll net only 16 of 49 delegates. And John Kasich, whose national viability
has been largely dismissed by the media and other campaigns, continues to be a
headache for the Florida senator. Kasich pulls from the same type of voters as
Rubio. In Virginia, where Rubio finished three points behind Trump, Kasich took
9 percent of the vote. And in Vermont, where Kasich finished just over 1,000
votes behind Trump, Rubio failed to even clear the delegate threshold.
Rubio-world sees a better map moving forward. Other than
North Carolina and Kentucky, there are no more Southern states left. Michigan
looks promising, and two weeks from today, the race moves to his home state of
Florida, whose winner-take-all 99 delegates could easily recalibrate the
primary math. He finished the night there, delivering his Super Tuesday speech
early in a tacit acknowledgment that the results were unlikely to improve much
as the hours progressed.
In any other election year, donors would be clamoring for
Rubio to get out of the race and make way for a candidate who had proven
himself more viable — someone who had one more than one state. But “this
unusual election,” as Rubio termed it here earlier today, means that he remains
the establishment favorite to take on Trump, even if the actual results make
that an increasingly dubious distinction. Financial support is lining up behind
him to keep him in the race against Trump beyond Florida, even if that means a
contested convention. The month of April has contests in a number of states
that don’t bind delegates, meaning the primary vote in that state won’t
necessarily mean much come July. And even bound delegates, in most states, are
only bound for the first ballot.
For the moment, Rubio can claim some small victory
tonight: Thanks to his win in Minnesota, Ted Cruz can no longer call himself the
only candidate in the race who has proven he can beat Donald Trump.
It’s an accomplishment Rubio will no doubt point to as he
continues to throw everything he has at the race’s front-runner. This
afternoon, he added a Minnesota-touch to the barrage of insults he’s taken to
lobbing at Trump throughout his stump speech.
“If any state has experience with electing someone who
runs as some great celebrity, this tough-talking celebrity. Well, how’d that
work out for Jesse Ventura? Jesse Ventura is an embarrassment,” Rubio said.
Minnesota Republicans evidently agreed. They may live in
the state that elected a professional wrestler to be governor and a Saturday Night Live star to the Senate,
but on Tuesday night, Trump proved to be a bridge too far.
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