As expected, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio began making his 2016 presidential campaign official Monday. The first step in the campaign rollout process involved an announcement to top donors, while a public speech is scheduled for Monday night in Miami. (Donors first, public second!) He’ll travel to New Hampshire on Friday.
As described in this usefully comprehensive Upshot summary of the 2016 landscape, Rubio is positioned as an “electable” alternative to Jeb Bush; Bush is the presumptive current favorite for the Republican nomination by virtue of his strong standing with donors and party leaders, aka The Republican Establishment. Rubio’s main rival for the unofficial title of Most Broadly Appealing Alternative to Jeb Bush is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose Our American Revival PAC apparently welcomed Rubio to the race by mischeviously buying Twitter ads that show up when you search for “Marco Rubio.”
Screen shot/Twitter
For its part, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight data-journalism site says Rubio is the first officially declared Republican candidate—the others are Ted Cruz and Rand Paul—with “a good shot at the nomination.”
