Marco Rubio’s political connections seem to have paid off

Al’s Loupe

Marco Rubio’s political connections seem to have paid off

Zac Anderson of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a scathing exposé on Marco Rubio this past weekend titled “Restraint Message Belies Rubio’s Financial Woes.” If it wasn’t that it’s six pages long, I would have had it translated. Instead I’ve decided to give you the highlights (or lowlights) of why Rubio, who aspires to be Florida’s next U.S. senator, would be a bad choice on November 2.

As Anderson states a the beginning of his piece, “…Rubio has carried this message of fiscal responsibility to great applause across Florida. … What Rubio does not tell the crowds is that he has gone deep into debt and struggled to make his payments… in a series of financial transactions that led to accusations that he received special treatment because of his political connections, abused campaign cash and engaged in deals where a conflict of interest existed between his political position and financial benefit. … Such deals seem to contradict the principles Rubio espouses on the campaign trail: calling for balanced budgets as he strained his own, and criticizing government waste as he arranged unadvertised government jobs for himself.”

Rubio once served as speaker of the Florida House, one of the three most powerful political positions in the state. A look at the record shows that his finances improved substantially the moment he became politically powerful. His problem, though, as a Tallahassee colleague and now political opponent said, “He spends money like a drunken sailor.”

Here’s a list of dubious financial moves by Rubio, compiled by the Herald-Tribune’s Anderson:

• Arranging a $135,000 home credit line in 2006 from a bank controlled by political supporters who valued his home at 25 percent above the purchase price a month after the sale closed.
• Rubio never made more than $96,000 as a lawyer. The year after becoming speaker of the House for the 2007 and 2008 sessions he secured a job making $300,000 per year at the politically connected statewide firm of Broad & Cassel.
• Rubio went in with David Rivera on the purchase of a $135,000 home in Tallahassee. The house slipped into foreclosure briefly this year after the two men failed to pay the mortgage for five months. They immediately came up with $9,524 to make the foreclosure filing go away.
• By the end of 2005, Rubio had three home mortgages, a home equity line of credit, a car loan and more than $150,000 in student loans — a total debt load of $1,025,444.58. That same year, the Republican Party of Florida gave Rubio a credit card to use at his discretion. In 2007 and 2008, Rubio charged nearly $100,000 on his Republican Party credit card, mostly on personal expenses.
• Rubio admitted that he double-billed the Republican Party and the state of Florida for airplane tickets. He repaid the party $2,400 for the tickets after media reports.
• Another questionable Rubio deal arose in May 2007, when he sold his first home to Nora Cereceda. At the time of the sale, Cereceda’s son — chiropractor Mark Cereceda, who runs a chain of clinics — was aggressively lobbying Rubio over a state insurance issue. Nora Cereceda paid $380,000 cash for the house, a $205,000 profit for Rubio at a time when the market had begun to drop. The sale price was comparable to other sales at the time, but the home value has since dropped in half, to $215,403, according to the county property appraiser’s website. Shortly after Dr. Cereceda’s mother purchased the home, Rubio removed the House’s block on the insurance provision and voted for it himself. The legislation extended the state mandate that drivers purchase $10,000 worth of personal injury insurance. Many of Dr. Cereceda’s customers are injured drivers who pay with insurance.
• Questions about whether Rubio’s political position helped him financially came up again in 2008, when a term-limited Rubio was leaving the Legislature and was planning his next move. Florida International University announced Rubio had been hired to teach political science classes and to do research part time for $69,000 per year. The job was never publicly advertised. That year, the university cut 23 degree programs and 200 jobs. Another 200 jobs were cut the following year.
• After joining the FIU faculty, Rubio subsequently paid his boss, Dario Moreno, the professor who helped get him hired, $12,000 to conduct polling for his U.S. Senate campaign. Moreno stopped working for Rubio when the payment was reported in the media. About the same time, Rubio landed an $8,000-per-month consulting contract with Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami’s large public hospital, just months after he helped secure an extra $20 million state budget allocation for the hospital during his speakership.

Don’t take my word for these facts, read them for yourself, as reported by Zac Anderson in the Herald-Tribune, at http://www.theledger.com/article/20100918/NEWS/9185023/1286?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar. But after this, I would ask Progreso Weekly readers living in Florida if this is the type of individual you want representing you as a U.S. senator in Washington, D.C.?

One last thing. Anderson reports that the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald newspapers reported this year that Rubio’s credit card spending is under investigation by the FBI and IRS. So if he happens to get elected, there’s still a chance he may end up in jail anyway…