WASHINGTON (AP) – As a young state legislator, Marco Rubio pushed Miami-Dade County officials to allow a multimillion-dollar industrial development to be built on restricted land near the Florida Everglades, months after he backed a law that made it harder for people to challenge such projects, The Associated Press has learned.
Around the same time, Rubio – then a rising Republican star in the state – 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 by his work for the developer in May 2002. 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.