An American Son: A Memoir

by Marco Rubio

When I came home the following week, I opened the Miami campaign office in Little Havana, renting space in a building that a few months earlier had been the studios of Radio Mambí, the leading anti-Castro Cuban exile station in Miami. Running a high-profile campaign in Miami had been a graveyard for the careers of more than a few aspiring Miami politicians. Balancing the various political factions and pleasing the sensitive egos in local Republican politics was complicated work that had proven beyond the competence of many young operatives before me. My detractors, having failed to deny me the job, now relished the prospect that the rivalries and antagonisms in Miami politics would bring an abrupt end to my fledgling career. But, again, my naïveté spared me from recognizing their ill wishes and the possibility I might not be up to the job.

  Senator Dole was a heavy underdog. During the primary season many of us supported him because he was the candidate most likely to win the nomination. But by the fall it had become increasingly difficult to build any excitement for the campaign. It was frustrating as well as difficult work, but on the whole a valuable experience. I became one of a tight circle of young, first-time operatives who remained loyal to Senator Dole’s campaign and worked doggedly for his election. We would remain closely associated for the next fifteen years.

  David Rivera would serve as the rules committee chairman in the Florida House when I was speaker and now serves in Washington as a member of the Florida delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Alina Garcia would be my first legislative aide in the Florida legislature, before working for David in the same capacity in the legislature and later in Congress. She is also the godmother of my youngest child, Dominick, and her brother, Wilfredo, is a priest who baptized two of our four kids. Monica Rodríguez was another of my earliest legislative aides; her husband, Len Collins, served as my parliamentarian when I was speaker, and as legal counsel in my Senate office. Carlos Lopez-Cantera served with me in the Florida House, where he became an important committee chairman and later majority leader. Nelson Diaz was my legislative assistant in Tallahassee before going on to law school and a successful lobbying career. Jose Mallea worked for President Bush’s chief of staff Andy Card, and then as chief of staff to the mayor of Miami before managing my Senate campaign.

  By late September, everyone knew Senator Dole would lose, and other than our small but dedicated group and a few loyal volunteers, it was hard to get anyone else to care about, much less work for, a losing campaign. In the end, I was never really in any danger of alienating prominent figures in Miami Republican politics. None of them wanted to be involved in the campaign.

  I put in long hours, though, arriving at the office early every morning and often staying until midnight or later. Most days involved mundane but important tasks: setting up phone banks, organizing sign wavings, addressing whatever small problems walked in the door on a given day. Sometimes, I represented the campaign at public events. One of those occasions I will remember the rest of my life.

  A representative of a local Spanish-language radio station called the office and asked for a Dole surrogate to debate a Democrat on air. I called every Spanish-speaking Republican legislator I could find. They were all unavailable or unwilling to do it. So I had to do it myself. It didn’t go well.

  I was not well prepared. My opponent was an experienced Democratic operative who had done this kind of thing many times. He knew all of Senator Dole’s vulnerabilities and easily countered the few obvious talking points I used to criticize President Clinton. He made short work of me. Several Republicans called the campaign office and the state party office to complain about my performance and demand I never be allowed to represent the campaign again in a public forum. It was a valuable, if painful, lesson. I vowed I would never again show up for an interview, speech or debate before I had done all I could to make certain I was the best-prepared person in the room.

  The radio debate debacle notwithstanding, I received generally positive reviews for my work on the campaign. Local Republicans respected my dedication to a losing cause. People began commenting for the first time on my tenacity and concentration, which would be valuable attributes in a political career, were I to pursue one.

  Jeanette, however, didn’t consider it a virtue that I had the ability to focus on a political campaign to the exclusion of all else. She complained, rightly so, that I had been completely consumed by the work. Even when I wasn’t working, when I spent a few hours with her on the weekend, the campaign was all I could think and talk about. “It feels like you’re cheating on me,” she told me. And I was. Except the object of my obsession wasn’t another girl. It was politics, and it wouldn’t be the last time I would make her feel politics took precedence over our relationship. I was chasing my ambitions, and I left her chasing after me.

  Senator Dole lost the election, and although the outcome had been expected, it stung nonetheless. But the experience was invaluable. I had never before led anything bigger than a weekend pickup game of football. Now I had run a local grassroots campaign and learned the tactics and skills required to do it successfully in the future. I had impressed prominent Republicans in Miami-Dade politics, including Al Cardenas.

  Al, a partner in Miami law firm Tew Cardenas, had been involved in Miami-Dade politics for a long time. He had run unsuccessfully for Congress in the late seventies against the legendary Claude Pepper, and served as vice chairman of the state party. After the election, he offered me a job as his associate at Tew Cardenas.

  The job at Al’s firm offered a starting annual salary of $57,000. The job in the state attorney’s office paid less than $30,000 a year. I wanted to be a prosecutor. I wanted to gain courtroom experience. I relished the excitement of trying cases and had little interest in the land use and zoning law that Al practiced. But I had student loans to repay. I wanted to get married. And I wanted to help support my family so my father could at last retire.

  For years I had ended my nightly prayers with the same request. I prayed that my parents would live long enough to see me succeed, and that my success would allow them to enjoy a comfortable old age. I was haunted by the fear that one or both of them would fall ill and die without ever receiving a reward on earth for all the sacrifices they had made for us. My father was seventy years old. He was still working late evenings and weekends as a banquet bartender, as he had done twenty years earlier. On nights when he came home late from another wedding or bar mitzvah at the Mayfair House, and I was in bed but awake, I would hear him limp tiredly up the steps to our house, fumbling with his keys while he searched for the right one. The memory has stayed with me all my life.

  A salary of $57,000 seemed like a great deal of money to me at the time. It was more than my father had ever made, and more than enough, I thought, to cover my student loan payments and help pay our household bills. I could afford to get married soon, too. I accepted Al’s offer, and in late November 1996 I began working as an associate attorney at the law offices of Tew Cardenas.

  My decision allowed my father to retire from bartending, and I am profoundly grateful for that. My dad didn’t have any hobbies—he didn’t golf or fish or enjoy any recreation that other men of his age enjoyed in their retirement. We knew he wouldn’t be happy in retirement unless he had something useful to do. So we found him a job as a school crossing guard with the Miami-Dade Police Department. He loved it, and in less than a year he was temporarily promoted to supervisor. The promotion didn’t last, however. My father’s lack of a formal education made his daily reports appear as if a child had done them. Many times I saw him sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly at his paperwork, confused, not knowing where to begin. From time to time he would ask me to review his work the way a child asks a parent. He did the best he could, but it was apparent from what he wrote that he lacked basic reading and writing skills, especially in English.

  I worked primarily for Al at the firm. Most of our work was on zoning cases, but I helped as well with some of his other government relations work. I spent most of my firs
t year learning how to persuade local zoning authorities to accept our clients’ applications while preserving the option to appeal to the courts should the application be denied. In addition to my zoning work for Al, I helped with a few cases for the Miami-Dade School Board, for whom the firm handled construction litigation.

  I had wanted to be a litigator in law school, which I assumed would keep me in the courtroom a lot, arguing before judge and jury. In reality, the life of a litigator, especially a commercial litigator, is considerably more mundane. It involves countless hours of research and writing, and precious few courtroom appearances. The time that is spent in the courtroom is seldom entrusted to a young associate. I didn’t particularly enjoy the work, but I did like the other advantages of working at Tew Cardenas. I developed a camaraderie with the other associates there. And working for Al meant I could stay active in Miami politics. He always had a hand in important local races, and often enlisted my assistance.

  I had other things to occupy my attention as well. I was almost twenty- six years old. Jeanette and I had dated for six years, and our relationship had continued on the assumption we would marry after I had finished law school. Jeanette never pressured me to get married. On the contrary, I talked about it more than she did. The prospect of marriage seemed to frighten her a little. The only marriages she had observed closely—her parents’ and then her mother’s second marriage—had ended in divorce. I had no reservations about the institution of marriage in general or marriage to Jeanette in particular. I think I had known I would marry her almost from the moment we started dating.

  I am not by nature the most thoughtful romantic. But I wanted our proposal to be a moment neither of us would forget. I wanted Jeanette to know, despite my many defects, that I could rise to the occasion and let her know how much I loved her. New York was Jeanette’s favorite city in the world. She had dreamed of living there one day. I had never been to New York. When I pictured the city, the only landmark that came to mind was the Empire State Building, which I decided would be the ideal location for proposing marriage to Jeanette Dousdebes, on Valentine’s Day 1997.

  I told her I wanted to take her on a surprise one-day trip to a cold-weather city. She didn’t discover our destination until we arrived at the departure gate. After we landed at LaGuardia Airport, I asked the cab- driver to take us to the Empire State Building. It was a cold and windy morning, and Jeanette balked at the idea of sightseeing on the observation deck, where we would be at the mercy of the elements. I pleaded with her that King Kong had been my favorite movie as a boy, and I couldn’t leave New York without visiting the location of the film’s most famous scene.

  She was right about the weather. It was freezing, and I knew I would have just a couple of minutes to propose before she insisted we go back inside. So I reached into my coat pocket, retrieved the ring and asked her to marry me.

  I think she had suspected New York was our secret destination, but from the shocked look on her face, I knew I had managed to surprise her anyway. She hadn’t expected the proposal, but she accepted without hesitating. We went inside to phone her mother. We spent the rest of the day enjoying the sights and pleasures of the city. I caught her glancing at her ring frequently. Her fear of marriage would reemerge a few more times in the coming months, but not that day. That day we were all smiles.

  Jeanette’s sister Adriana had been a Miami Dolphins cheerleader for several years. In the spring of 1997, soon after our engagement, Jeanette decided she wanted to try out for the squad. I supported the idea. I wanted her to be able to do anything that made her happy, and to have something in her life that was hers and not mine as well. I’m sure the possibility of free tickets to home games was a consideration as well.

  Making the cheerleading team had become more competitive in recent years. The year before, the Dolphins had brought in a veteran member of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to revamp the Miami squad and make it more glamorous. But Jeanette survived every cut and made it to the final tryout. The night before, she stayed up all night practicing with Adriana. I nervously waited for her at her house, and was thrilled when she returned and told me she had made the team.

  The job didn’t pay much, just a small sum per game, and a more generous fee for public appearances. It also required a substantial commitment of time. She had to practice every weeknight and arrive at the stadium early on game days.

  I made it to all the home games that year, and would pester her afterward about exchanges between the players she might have overheard during the game. One Sunday, she was designated the “cheerleader of the game,” and her picture was featured prominently in the layout of the team program and on the Jumbotron screen during the game. I told everyone seated around me she was my fiancée. When we have kids, I thought to myself, I can tell them that one of their parents had made it onto an NFL field.

  I was doing well at Tew Cardenas. But when I look back on my years there, it’s clear that while my time might have belonged to the firm, my heart belonged to politics. Al was deeply involved in two local elections, in Miami and Hialeah, in 1997, and he pressed me into service as well. The culture at the firm expected lawyers to remain at their desks all day. As far as the senior partners were concerned, if you weren’t in the office, you weren’t working, and if you weren’t working, you weren’t billing hours. Doing campaign work didn’t sit well with the other partners, and a few of them told me I would have to decide soon whether I wanted to be a lawyer or a politician. I told them what they wanted to hear. I wanted to be a good lawyer. If I decided to enter politics seriously someday, it would be years from now. But that wasn’t true. I liked the law. I loved politics. And I was already looking for a way to do what I loved.

  I was approached that summer to serve on the city of West Miami Code Enforcement Board. I told Al about it, and he discouraged me. He had struggled for years with the competing demands of politics and a law practice, and knew how difficult a balance it was to maintain, especially for an attorney in his first years of practice. The board didn’t require much of a time commitment, and wouldn’t take time or attention from my work for the firm. I saw the position as merely something to add to my résumé as I established myself as a lawyer. But Al saw it as a first step down a slippery slope to a career in politics and not the law. He didn’t encourage me, but he didn’t prohibit me, either, and I accepted the position.

  He was right in one respect. My seat on the board would whet my appetite for a career in politics. Since I had sat at my grandfather’s feet and listened to him talk about politics and politicians, the profession had fascinated me. I never viewed politics and government service in the way it is often popularly viewed, as a self-interested and corrupt business. I always believed it was an honorable way to distinguish yourself, and an opportunity to advance the causes you believe in and oppose the ones you don’t.

  By November of that year, after serving on the code enforcement board for a few months, I started planning the beginning of my own political career. I decided the best place to start was in my own city of West Miami by seeking election to the city commission. West Miami is a small city, and I felt confident the campaign and my service on the commission wouldn’t interfere with my work at Tew Cardenas. I thought it was a manageable commitment that would let me practice law until I was financially stable, while I kept a low profile in local politics in the event I might run for another office in the future.

  I knew I couldn’t win without the blessing of West Miami’s popular mayor, Rebeca Sosa. I had been introduced to her a few months earlier by Republican committeewoman Liliana Ros, who told her I wanted to get involved in West Miami politics. The introduction had led to my appointment to the code enforcement board. I went to see Rebeca at her home in early December, where I found her putting up Christmas lights. I told her I wanted to discuss the upcoming city elections, and she invited me inside for some Cuban coffee.

  I didn’t know what to expect. I assumed she had close relationships with the city com
missioners and worried she would think my intentions were presumptuous. But to my surprise and relief, she told me she was unhappy with one of the two incumbent commissioners seeking reelection, and offered me her full support.

  I would have to get permission from two people before I could officially commit to the race: Al Cardenas and Jeanette. I hadn’t mentioned my intentions to either of them yet, and I wasn’t looking forward to it now. The conversation with Jeanette turned out to be easier than I’d expected. She had always assumed politics would eventually play a big part in our lives. This was a little sooner than she had expected, she said, but if that was what I wanted to do, it was fine with her.

  Al would be a harder sell. I expected that rather than tell me he didn’t want me to do it, he would tell me the other partners would object. I decided to preempt the argument and go straight to the firm’s senior partner, Tom Tew. I explained that the commission met only four hours a month and wouldn’t interfere with my cases. Nor did I anticipate any conflict of interest between city commission work and the interests of our clients. It would be no bigger a commitment than serving on a condominium board, I assured him. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but he didn’t object. He had been involved in litigation concerning the 1997 Miami mayoral elections, and, I suspected, had been a little bitten by the political bug himself.

  I met with Al next, and as I expected, he expressed concern that the other partners would be displeased. I told him I had already received Tom’s permission. There wasn’t anything he could say to discourage me after that. I know he was worried that in a few months, when he became the state party chairman, his partners would complain he was spending too much time on politics at the firm’s expense. Now he would worry I couldn’t be relied on to pick up the slack in his absence. But he let me do it anyway, and I was grateful.

  I would run for my first political office in 1998 and, with a little luck, win it. I would also get married to the woman I loved, who would eventually have cause to wonder if the major events of my political career and our life together would always coincide.