Politics

Chamber of Commerce backs Marco Rubio against Charlie Crist in Florida Senate race

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
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Florida’s Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Marco Rubio Friday announced an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — which earlier this year said it would spend between $50 and $75 million this election season helping political candidates.

“The chamber launched and is launching our largest political voter education effort in the organization’s history,” Bill Miller, the Chamber’s senior vice president of political affairs and regulations. “The policies that are being driven out of Washington have created a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the decision-making that companies are making. It is also creating a sense of urgency that we need to do everything possible to change the numbers in Washington.”

Miller wouldn’t go into details about how, specifically, the Chamber plans to help Rubio, or how many of those millions of chamber dollars will go towards helping Rubio — and, by extension, attacking independent Senate candidate and current Florida governor, Charlie Crist.

The Chamber plans to hold a joint event to formally endorse Rubio on Saturday in Orlando.

The Associated Press reports that the Chamber is already running political advertisements attacking Democratic candidates in Senate races in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

On a conference call with Miller, Rubio said he wouldn’t change his position on any issues because of an endorsement.

“We are going to continue to campaign on the idea that government’s job is to create an environment where job creators can create jobs,” Rubio said. “It has worked for 200 and some odd years in America and it makes absolutely no sense to abandon. That’s why I’m grateful for the Chamber’s support and that’s been my consistent message since I got in this race.”

The biggest difference in ideologies between Rubio and the Chamber is how the U.S. handles relations with Cuba.

The Chamber historically has promoted ending economic embargoes with Cuba, something Rubio and most top Republicans have opposed. Rubio and Miller said they agree to disagree on issues regarding Cuba, mostly because they’re both more concerned with what’s going on in Washington.

“I think that this is a respectful disagreement,” Miller said. “There are so many common issues where the theme that Marco is running on and the things that he believes in are what we as a country need. We will absolutely work together on trying to figure out a solution for this.”

As for what it would take for him to support opening Cuban embargoes, Rubio said the people would have to be politically free.

“My number one hope for Cuba is political freedom,” Rubio said. “Once they have political freedom, Cuba can choose any economic style they want. They can choose to have as much government or as little government in their economy as they please – that’s up to the people of Cuba.”

Regarding President Obama’s extension of unemployment and joblessness benefits to a maximum of 99 weeks, Alex Burgos, Rubio’s campaign spokesperson, said Rubio supports them to an extent.

“Marco is supportive of extending unemployment benefits as long as it can be paid for,” Burgos said.

Burgos said Rubio has recommended utilizing previously unused stimulus funds to pay for unemployment extensions.

Latest polls show Crist and Rubio neck-and-neck in the race, but the Chamber’s endorsement of Rubio comes right after Crist held his special session in Tallahassee to consider an offshore drilling ban in Florida — something that already exists in the state.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the special session he [Crist] called in Tallahassee was a stunt,” Rubio said. “Offshore drilling in Florida water is already prohibited. Nothing is going to happen on oil drilling in Florida’s water because the legislature isn’t even back in session until November- and nobody up there is asking for there to be a lifting of that ban at this point.”

Rubio also took the opportunity to jab at Crist’s latest flip-flop, a newfound opposition to the repeal of Obama’s health-care overhaul.