Mitch Perry
Happy Wednesday to y’all. And if you’re a NY Yankee fan, hey, be positive. At least you made the “playoff,” for the first time in three years.
There’s a new Quinnipiac poll out this morning on the Florida presidential race, and the results here are similar to everywhere else in the country. It’s Trump and Carson taking charge.
Marco Rubio is third at 14 percent. Hey, 3rd place behind the two non politico’s – not bad, you might think.
Not great either.
He was at 11 percent in August in the Q poll, 18 percent in June, 12 percent in April, and 15 percent in February. In other words, he’s not moving too much in either direction, which is fine if the election was in 2018, but actually the Republicans are going to nominate a candidate by early next summer.
But forget the numbers, or haven’t you heard how “great” Carly Fiorina is doing, when in fact her poll numbers are still relatively modest (though yes, above the 1% she was garnering for a few months).
Marco is getting more heat for missing votes in the Senate, and not just from the media. Both Trump and Jeb Bush are referring to his high number of missed votes in 2015. Yesterday Rubio missed the Senate’s vote on the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed relatively easily.
So does anybody really care about this?
Rubio is certainly banking on the folks not holding this against him, and to be fair, while his poor attendance record this year is the worst of any senator running for president, it’s not the worst in recent years.
In 2007, John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all missed scores of Senate votes. McCain voted only 44 percent of the time, compared with Clinton, who made 77 percent of the votes and Obama who showed up 62 percent of the time.
Rubio has roughly made 69 percent of his votes.
The upshot is that it certainly didn’t hurt McCain and Obama, who became their party’s nominees.
But it’s still awkward for Rubio to have to finesse.
In other news..
Florida Democrats talk about living on $85 a week taking the “Minimum Wage Challenge.”
A new poll shows 82 percent of GOP voters believe there should be universal background check for gun purchases.
Tampa state Representative Dana Young is not pleased to see the Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission spend their dollars on an advertorial in the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
You can bet that his critics have been noticing some of Jeb Bush’s verbal miscues that have come at an alarming rate this year. American Bridge has, and the group is now pushing a @JebNoFilter meme.
John Kasich and Rick Santorum are the latest GOP entrants coming to Orlando next month for Blaise Ingoglia’s Sunshine Summit.
The Florida Wildlife Federation is endorsing the Floridians for Solar Choice constitutional amendment.
And hardcore activists Ralph Fernandez and Al Fox met up for a fascinating debate about U.S. relations with Cuba at the Centro Asturiano in Ybor City on Monday.
