Scott Powers
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is having to find another new local office, this time in Miami.
But unlike when the Republican senator had to relocate his Jacksonville and Tampa offices last year, the move is being attributed to the office space, not to landlords getting frustrated with ongoing political protests outside the building.
“This is different from Jacksonville and Tampa. We are in the process of relocating that office, but it was our decision, for a couple of reasons. We were not asked to leave by building management,” Todd Reid, Rubio’s state director, said Thursday.
The current Miami office actually is in Doral, just west of the Miami International Airport, and is owned by the American Welding Society, which also has its headquarters in the building. The society did not respond Thursday to an inquiry from Florida Politics.
Reid said the Rubio team has identified a new location in Miami but is not ready to move, nor announce the new location. However, he said the new location would continue to provide easy public access.
As with the Jacksonville and Tampa offices before Rubio relocated them in early 2017, and as with Rubio’s Orlando office, progressive groups are holding frequent protests outside Rubio’s Miami locale, often with news conferences, and usually with chants, signs and demonstrations. In Orlando protesters even staged a sit-in in the building’s lobby one night, forcing police to arrest 10 of them.
In Jacksonville and Tampa, the buildings’ managers reportedly reached a point where they were concerned the protests were bothering other building tenants too much and had the senator move his offices.
The Tampa and Jacksonville offices were moved into federal courthouses. Technically, they still are fully accessible to the public, but federal buildings have high security, and all the other tenants are federal offices. Rubio also has offices in Pensacola, Tallahassee, and Palm Beach Gardens.
