WASHINGTON (AP) – Marco Rubio stood before Miami-Dade County officials in May 2002 and pushed them to permit a multimillion-dollar industrial development to be built on restricted land near the Florida Everglades.
Two months earlier, Rubio – a rising Republican star in the state Legislature – backed a law that made it harder for people to challenge the kinds of developments he advocated for as a private attorney. Around the same period, Rubio also requested state money to be earmarked to benefit a flood-prone area around the development project.
Those efforts by Rubio, now a U.S. senator and the leading establishment alternative to GOP presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, provide a glimpse into how he handled the intersection of his public role as a young lawmaker and his private representation of a company that stood to benefit from his political connections.
There’s no evidence Rubio violated Florida ethics rules. But his seat in Tallahassee, the state capital, put him in the position of advocating before a county commission that relied on lawmakers like him to fight for state money.
“I always had a problem when legislators would lobby at the county commission, because you always felt like if you didn’t vote their way, does this mean we’ll lose funds in Tallahassee?” said Katy Sorenson, a former county commissioner and Democrat.