An American Son: A Memoir

by Marco Rubio

  I had just been on my knees in prayer asking God’s help. Now a door suddenly appeared to open and offer me a way out of my predicament. Was it a miracle? I don’t know. I do know that whatever fortune or misfortune we encounter in our lives, God expects it to lead us closer to Him.

  The headhunter put me in touch with the firm’s senior partner, Alan Becker, who had once served in the legislature, too. I met with him a few days later at his office in Hollywood, Florida. Becker and Poliakoff had a very successful land use and zoning practice in Broward. Alan told me they wanted to expand the practice to Miami-Dade. We spent most of the interview discussing the challenges of practicing law while serving in the legislature. We seemed to hit it off on a personal level, but he couldn’t make me an offer until he had discussed it with his partners and gotten their approval.

  The next Monday, Alan called me and offered me the job, with a salary of $93,000—the precise amount I had budgeted before Ruden McClosky cut my pay. I didn’t hesitate a moment. Two weeks later, I drove to the firm’s Hollywood office for my first day in my new job.

  I woke up early to beat the traffic. As I reached for my wallet before walking out the door, I saw the yellow sticky note attached to it:

  Good Luck Tomorrow!

  Don’t be nervous,

  Make sure you’re on time,

  Break a leg and

  Remember I Love You!!!

  (P.S. I got you the bars as a snack when you get hungry)

  Love, Jeanette

  The additional money gave us a little breathing room and would allow us to move back into our house in West Miami soon. I vowed not to make the same mistakes I had made at Ruden McClosky. I intended to arrive at the office before seven every morning. It wasn’t an election year and I would be able to spend more time in my law office that summer. Either I would make this opportunity work or I would have to give up my political career. I was determined to make it work.

  I flew to Tallahassee for the start of committee work on a Tuesday morning in September. I was in my house office in a meeting when my aide Nelson Diaz passed me a note informing me that a bomb had exploded at the World Trade Center. I had visited the towers just four weeks earlier when I had traveled to New York for a conference. Speaker Feeney had hosted a fund-raiser for our Florida House candidates at Windows on the World on the 107th floor of the North Tower. I had brought Jeanette and Amanda with me, and I remembered having a hard time getting Amanda’s stroller onto one of the tower’s escalators.

  Nelson soon corrected his early bulletin. It wasn’t a bomb explosion—an airplane had crashed into the North Tower. Like most people, I initially assumed it had been an accident; the pilot of a small aircraft had probably flown too close to the New York skyline and had somehow lost control of the plane. We watched on television as the second plane struck the South Tower, and we realized the United States was under attack.

  Within minutes the Florida capitol was swarming with heavily armed police. I appreciated the quick response but thought it was an overreaction. I didn’t believe that terrorists who had just struck New York and Washington would be interested in attacking the sleepy capital of Florida. Nelson reminded me that the governor, whose office was four floors beneath mine, happened to be the president’s brother. I decided that getting out of the capitol might not be a bad idea after all.

  I wanted to go home as soon as possible, but all flights were grounded after the attacks. I drove to Miami the next morning with three of my colleagues. We lived just a few miles from the airport, and I had become accustomed to the sound of aircraft overhead. Now there was just an eerie silence above, and the empty sky seemed surreal.

  The shock and uncertainty that gripped Americans in those first days and weeks after 9/11 began to subside slowly as people resumed their lives and things returned to what would become the new normal. I managed my time better and my work at the firm was going well. Our financial situation was much improved. We were growing more accustomed to the changes in our lives necessitated by my political career. We were as content as we had been in some time. And when Jeanette announced in October that she was pregnant again, we were both happy and excited about it. We hadn’t planned it, but we were thrilled Amanda would have a brother or sister close to her age.

  The legislature would soon begin the politically charged, highly technical, once in a decade process of redistricting. I had no official leadership role in redistricting, but I managed to become a key player in the design of the house districts, and a principal defender of the final plan. In the process, I gained favor with my Republican colleagues and with Johnnie Byrd, the next speaker of the house.

  I didn’t know what my next role would be in the new legislature. After two years as majority whip, the logical next step was to run for majority leader. But with so many members ahead of me in seniority, I appeared to be a long shot.

  Jeanette was scheduled to have an induced labor on June 18 that summer. The night before, I had an uneasy feeling about it. Researching all the potential complications of childbirth had made me a nervous wreck the day Amanda was born, and I attributed my anxiety that day to the memory of that experience.

  Her labor went much more quickly than it had the last time. It seemed mere minutes had passed before I was introduced to my newest daughter, Daniella. We hadn’t known the sex of the baby in advance, and I was happy Amanda would have a baby sister and Jeanette would have two little girls to keep her company when I was away from home.

  Jeanette delivered her in a birthing suite, a large and comfortable room intended to make the experience more like giving birth at home. Although the room was spacious, there were so many people present during the delivery that it didn’t feel large. The doctor, nurse, myself, Jeanette, her mother, my mother, Veronica and Jeanette’s three sisters were all present when Daniella entered the world. As soon as she was born everyone was instantly mesmerized by her without realizing that something was seriously wrong with her mother.

  Jeanette was suffering from an obstetric complication called placenta accreta in which the placenta becomes so deeply attached to the uterine wall that the obstetrician has to remove it surgically. Women in this condition often hemorrhage, and the result can be a hysterectomy or even death depending on the severity of it. I could tell by the look on the doctor’s face that he was having trouble. He is a very calm and composed man who has delivered many of the children in our family. So when he suddenly ordered everyone except me to leave the room, we all knew something was wrong. He ordered three units of blood and told the nurses to have the operating room prepared. I heard one of the nurses page the anesthesiologist to report to the operating room as soon as possible. As they wheeled Jeanette out of the birthing suite to surgery, I overheard the doctor tell the nurses what was going on.

  The next thirty minutes were the longest half hour of my life. I paced right outside the surgery, praying for my wife’s recovery. I watched nurses race out of the operating room to retrieve more units of blood. I could hear our family in the waiting room, joking and laughing, unaware of the severity of her condition. I fought to keep from contemplating the worst.

  We were fortunate our doctor succeeded in stopping the bleeding with a relatively minor surgical procedure that averted the necessity of a hysterectomy. I waited until Jeanette was back in her room and settled before alerting the family to the situation. The next twenty-four hours were critical. She had lost so much blood that even a little more bleeding would require urgent attention. I spent almost the entire night staring at her while she slept, watching for any sign of distress.

  Later that night, the doctor came to her room and explained what had happened. There had been some difficulty stopping Jeanette’s bleeding when Amanda was born, and we had survived an all-out crisis with Daniella. He strongly advised us not to have any more children because he believed Jeanette suffered a predisposition to the condition. I was so relieved she and Daniella were okay, the last thing I was concerned with was having another child
. Jeanette felt differently. She believed we would have more children, and considered his recommendation to be a casual caution. We went home a few days later with the admonition Jeanette needed to take it very easy for the next six weeks.

  Primaries to nominate house candidates were held that summer. I decided to stay out of them for the most part. I wanted to spend time with Jeanette and the girls, and I didn’t want to further antagonize Gaston’s allies. Gaston was frantically traveling the state campaigning for candidates who would support him for speaker in the 2004 leadership election. If enough of them won, he would have the votes to defeat his rival, Allan Bense, and become the first Cuban American speaker of the Florida House. Had I campaigned, some of the candidates I would have helped were not Gaston’s supporters. So I limited my activity to supporting two Dole campaign alumni, David Rivera and Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

  The primaries were held in late August. David won and Carlos lost. But the biggest news of the night was that not enough of Gaston’s candidates had won. He dropped out of the speaker’s race that night and declared his support for Bense. That race was over, and I knew my colleagues would soon start concentrating on the next race for speaker of the house, in 2006, who would be chosen from my class.

  I didn’t have a burning desire to be the first Cuban American speaker. But after Gaston’s bid failed, there wasn’t any reason I should dismiss the idea. Two speakers would serve before my class chose one. Whatever assignment I received from the next speaker, Johnnie Byrd, would determine whether or not I had a decent shot at becoming speaker in 2006.

  I wanted to be majority leader. It would give me a platform to become involved in all the major issues addressed by the house, while a committee chairmanship would restrict my involvement to issues within my committee’s jurisdiction. But every supporter I talked to discouraged me from going after the job. They said I could kiss good-bye any ambition for speaker if I were majority leader. I would be in the vote-counting business, and would have to twist arms on difficult votes, making as many enemies as friends in the process.

  I saw the job differently. First, there was no guarantee I would be elected speaker, but I had a good chance right now of joining the senior leadership of the house. I had confidence in my communications skills, too, and believed the majority leader’s job would give me ample opportunity to communicate the Republican message on important issues.

  Mike Corcoran was a consultant to incoming speaker Johnnie Byrd who also did some work for me. I asked him to help persuade Johnnie to restructure the majority leader’s job, proposing that the majority leader’s responsibilities be limited to communication, and all vote-counting responsibilities given to a more powerful whip’s office. After several weeks of pitching, Speaker Byrd offered me the newly restructured majority leader’s job.

  I had been whip in my first two years, and I was about to be majority leader. Soon, I would have to make another, much more difficult decision, a decision that would affect not just my political future, but the happiness of my family.

  CHAPTER 17

  Running for Speaker

  IN ONE RESPECT, A CAMPAIGN FOR SPEAKER IS SIMILAR TO a primary campaign. You don’t need bumper stickers or signs or television ads, but you do travel the state and meet with the voters. They are a very select group of voters, to be sure. But as with any group of voters, their interests are various. Some colleagues want assurances their support would be rewarded with a committee chairmanship. Others simply support the candidate they like the best. Most, however, want to be with the winner, and wait to pledge their support to a candidate until they have a good idea who’s going to win.

  I knew if I ran for speaker I would have to overcome several obstacles. I represented a district in Miami-Dade, the most populous region in Florida, and the least popular with house members from the rest of the state, who believed South Florida received a disproportionate share of the state’s budget. There had not been a speaker elected from Miami-Dade since 1971, the year I was born.

  To have any chance at all, I had to have the united support of the Miami-Dade delegation, which has a long history of fractiousness. At least one of Gaston’s supporters in the delegation believed I had undermined his speaker’s bid by not ruling out a run of my own. A newly elected member of the delegation was upset with me because I had supported his primary opponent. I was far from assured of unified support within my own delegation.

  A few weeks after he withdrew from the speaker’s race, Gaston asked to have lunch with me, and urged me to run. To his credit and my good fortune, he hadn’t believed I had tried to undermine him. He didn’t hold me responsible for the defeat of his aspiration to be Florida’s first Cuban American speaker of the house. On the contrary, he told me he had gotten the ball to the five-yard line, and was now relying on me to get it into the end zone. He was proud of how close he had come, and prouder still he had made it more likely that a Cuban American would eventually be elected speaker.

  I decided to run, and from the start I made a series of terrible blunders. The first and most egregious was my failure to consult with Jeanette. She should have had a veto over my decision. I took for granted she would support the idea. My presumption was a mistake, and a selfish one, since Jeanette would have to assume even more of the responsibilities for raising our children and running our household than she already disproportionately shared. The travel and time the campaign required would come at the expense of my family. Jeanette would be publicly supportive of my bid. But privately, she resented the way I made my decision, and had every right to.

  My second mistake was to let the Miami Herald know I would run before I informed most of the members in the Miami-Dade delegation of my intentions. I had conferred with a few of them about my decision, but most of them learned about it when they read it in the newspaper. They all eventually supported me, but many of them would show little enthusiasm for my campaign.

  I opened a political committee to cover the expenses of my campaign for speaker. But I decided Jeanette and I would manage the fund-raising and reporting for the committee ourselves. That decision proved to be a disaster. I had estimated I would need to raise between $30,000 and $40,000 to pay for my travel, dinners and other events I would host, and to dispense campaign donations to Republican candidates. I seriously underestimated the costs, and raised and spent considerably more than I had anticipated. I was in over my head trying to do everything myself. I often used my or Jeanette’s personal credit cards to pay for many of the campaign’s expenditures. When I received my statement, I would spend hours trying to figure out which were political, and which were personal.

  I asked Jeanette to serve as the committee’s treasurer, putting her in an impossibly difficult situation. She didn’t accompany me on most of my trips or attend many of the events I attended in South Florida. She had to jog my memory to determine which credit card purchases were campaign expenditures, sometimes weeks after I had made them. It was an imperfect accounting system, to say the least.

  Years later, my lack of bookkeeping skills would come back to haunt me. The press and Governor Crist raised the matter during my U.S. Senate campaign, implying I had pocketed money from my finance committee and used it to pay for personal items. It wasn’t true, but I had helped create the misunderstanding my opponents exploited.

  The legislature’s 2003 session was a miserable experience for all involved. The legislature failed to deliver a state budget on time despite having a surplus of revenue. And the political capital Speaker Byrd possessed when he entered the office was exhausted before he gaveled the session to order.

  I spent much of my spare time during the session cultivating personal relationships with members and with people who might influence them. I used Gaston to keep our delegation united in support of me, while I met with members from the rest of the state. In that effort, I had two key allies, Stan Mayfield of Vero Beach and Ralph Arza from Miami. Both had entertained the idea of running for speaker, but Ralph had decided to support me
and persuaded Stan to do the same. As the first member from outside South Florida to back me, Stan was a hugely important recruit.

  The morning Allan Bense was designated the next speaker, we began securing pledges. I was off to an early start with fifteen pledges—thirteen from the South Florida delegation, Stan Mayfield’s pledge and another from John Carassas, a colleague at Becker and Poliakoff.

  My closest competitor was Dennis Ross. Dennis looked and comported himself like a speaker. He was a mature, intelligent and well-respected member of my class. He had ten pledges. Several of the other candidates had three or four. The race looked like it would be close and protracted, not unlike the Bense/Cantens race that preceded it.

  I had a pretty good idea where most members stood. That summer, David Rivera had traveled the state and met with most members in his class. He took detailed notes of his conversations, and knew what each of his classmates thought about me. Some thought I was too close to Johnnie Byrd. Others didn’t like Stan or Ralph, and expected they would receive the best leadership positions if I were elected. Others liked me, but weren’t ready to make a commitment yet.

  Stan and Ralph devised a plan to collect second-choice commitments from members, so I would have the lead in pledged members and the lead in members who pledged to support me if their candidate dropped out of the race. It proved to be a smart move.

  I was at home on a Tuesday night when David Rivera called to tell me he had just heard from someone in Lakeland, Florida, where Dennis Ross lived. Dennis had told friends he was dropping out of the race. I started speed-dialing members who had pledged to him but had committed to me as their second choice. The next morning, I drove up I 75 with my aide Sebastian Aleksander to districts in the western part of the state and appealed in person to members who had supported Dennis. By the end of the day, I had twenty-nine pledge cards.