Early on Tuesday, reports of Marco Rubio’s financial woes surfaced. As reported by The New York Times, Rubio has spent much of his adult life in debt, spending money on lavish luxury items while failing to pay off mortgages and other loans.
It is not just a failure to balance saving and spending; Rubio used a credit card intended for Republican Party expenses to repave parts of his property and cover a family reunion.
Furthermore, Rubio appointed his wife to be the treasurer of his political action committee.
His campaigns have also come under scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission. After running for Senate, the FEC found that Rubio received more than $210,000 in impermissible donations, alleging that most of those dollars exceeded contribution limits.
In an attempt to spin these troubles, Rubio has tried to make his situation relatable claiming that, “Like most Americans, I know what it’s like for money to be a limited resource and to have to manage it accordingly.” While this every-man argument may sound attractive, it is underscored by the fact that the average American has not made millions of dollars. In fact, from 1998 to 2008, Rubio earned $2.38 million dollars. That amount does not include his book sales, or the $800,000 he made from simply writing a memoir.
To put it simply, most Americans are not buying $80,000 luxury speedboats.
Yet, shockingly enough (or not so shocking depending on your point of view), Rubio liquidated his retirement account worth only $68,000 less than a month ago. Last week he was forced to sell his second home, which had nearly been foreclosed on after he and his friend failed to make a single payment for five months. These are not the moves of a man that is fiscally well off or responsible. In fact, some would argue that these are the actions of a desperate man attempting to balance an insufficient income with a lavish lifestyle and an eventual run for president.
The GOP has made a concerted effort at every turn to further a fiscally conservative agenda. Rubio himself stated in 2013 that, “We have a country that borrows too much money…If you allow politicians to spend money, they’ll do it.” A tad hypocritical, no? If Rubio does not have a solution to excessive spending in his own life, how can the American people expect him to balance the country’s budget?
Criticizing every walk of government spending, with the exception of the defense sector, the Republican Party simply cannot nominate a candidate that struggles with imprudent spending on a personal level. In his own memoir, Rubio described himself as having a “lack of bookkeeping skills” and an “imperfect accounting system.”
On the other hand, Rubio is the son of impoverished immigrants, a fact that could immediately land a swell of support from minority voters. In that vein, many view him as relatable as he is the only ‘American Dream’ candidate in the 2016 field (interestingly enough, the title of his memoir was “American Dreams”). Rubio is also a talented orator, an essential quality that is typically overlooked.
There is clearly a desirable narrative that could supersede this financial turmoil.
So, as the spotlight finds its focus on Republican front-runners for 2016, each candidates’ flaws have started to appear. With more than 15 politicians likely to vie for the coveted GOP nomination, only three or four truly have a chance of claiming victory. Of those front-runners, each has flaws that could easily cause their demise. If Rubio can daftly negotiate his way through these recent reports, the nomination could still be his for the taking. That said, he is not the front-runner and certainly has extensive damage control to look forward to in the upcoming news cycles.
Via Flickr/Gage Skidmore
