Drew Dixon
The University of Florida (UF) will be a significant resource for historians of Marco Rubio’s Senate career.
Now that Rubio is handling international affairs for the U.S. as Secretary of State, he is leaving his political papers drafted as he was U.S. Senator to libraries at UF.
Rubio served in the Senate between 2011 to 2025, when he departed to become Secretary of State. In those 14 years in the Senate, Rubio generated quite an archive of official papers and memos.
UF officials announced Monday that Rubio, a Republican, agreed to deposit his papers from his senatorial service, along with other materials of historical nature, to the school’s George A. Smathers Libraries political papers collection.
Many of those documents will come from Rubio’s time as a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He also served on the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
“We are honored that Secretary of State Rubio is entrusting us with his Senatorial papers,” said Judy Russell, Dean of University Libraries. “Preserving these historical documents is so important, and we are pleased future scholars will have the opportunity to engage with his materials and others in our collection.”
Rubio is an alumnus of UF, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1993.
The Florida Political Papers collection at UF houses many manuscripts from several of Florida’s highest-profile political leaders. The late Democrat Bob Graham, a former Governor and U.S. Senator, bestowed many of his political papers to the UF library system. Graham passed away in April.
Former U.S. Sen. and U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson also contributed many of his documents to the UF collection, along with many of his documents from NASA from when he served as the space agency’s Administrator from 2021 to 2025.
There are also documents in the UF archives from David Levy Yulee, who was a U.S. Senator for Florida before the American Civil War.
