MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Marco Rubio wants to be your second choice for president.
It’s an unusual admission for a candidate, but one Rubio is making openly as he works to unite the anti-Donald Trump vote behind him.
With only five candidates left in the Republican primary and time running out to halt Trump’s march toward the nomination, Rubio’s making the case to Republican voters that, even if he’s not their favorite, he’s their best chance to win.
“I wasn’t the first choice, and in the case of some of these folks, I wasn’t the second choice. Many of them didn’t want me to run … but now they are realizing that this is what the race is, these are the finalists and they made the choice that they think is best,” he told reporters Tuesday morning in Las Vegas before boarding a flight to Minneapolis.
He made the same case on the stump in Las Vegas, telling the crowd that voters are realizing, “he wasn’t our first choice but now he’s our best choice.”
And in Minneapolis, Minn., Rubio framed his second-choice standing as a good thing: The fact he’s picked up endorsements set free by candidates who dropped out shows he can unite the party, he said.
“I can unite this party — you’re already seeing that it’s happening. As candidates drop out people join our team,” he said.
And he argued that party unity would be key to defeating the Democrats come November.
“If we’re still angry and fighting and bickering and a third of our voters are saying I’m not voting cause I don’t like the guy or gal who won, we lose. We have to come together,” Rubio said in Minnesota.
The 1,700-strong crowd was fired up for Rubio, frequently shouting out affirmations to the candidate, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Though he delivered his standard stump speech, focusing on electability and defeating Hillary Clinton, he frequently departed from his prepared remarks to make unscripted jokes or chat with people in the crowd. At one point, after meandering off-topic, Rubio remarked on the “rowdy crowd” and had to herd the audience and himself back onto the issue at hand.
It was the second stop of Rubio’s three-state tour on Tuesday, which began in Nevada, hours before voters make their pick in the state’s caucuses.
His team has high hopes for his chances there, as the campaign has been investing resources in their Nevada ground game for months and he has a sentimental attachment to the state after spending six years of his childhood there.
Rubio has been highlighting those formative years, when his father was a bartender in Las Vegas, on the stump as he barnstormed the state in the day and a half before the caucuses.
But he and his team have adamantly refused to predict an outcome to the caucuses, with polling showing Trump holding a significant lead and the caucus format notoriously hard to evaluate.








