Incumbent U.S. Senator Marco Rubio made a stop in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown on Friday in the final days of the election to address Villagers at the Republican Headquarters in Lake Sumter Landing.
In his 10-minute speech to a room of around 100 supporters, Rubio mentioned visiting three other counties earlier in the day on the campaign trail, with a final stop planned later tonight in Osceola. Rubio aggressively kept to his “get out the vote” message, even drawing on the 2000 Presidential Election in defense of the importance of every vote.
“I know from the top of the ticket all the way down we need you to continue to vote … Every vote is going to count. And I don’t have to convince Floridians about that. I mean, you guys remember the year 2000 less than 600 votes didn’t just decide Florida, less than 600 votes decided the Presidency of the United States of America. And if you don’t think that’s consequential, think about the world. On September 11th of 2001, if President Al Gore.” The audience jeered before Rubio commented that “…About 600 Floridians stood in the way of that.”
Just before the primary, Rubio appeared in front of Villagers at Rohan Recreation Center. He lost the state and every precinct in The Villages to Donald Trump. Along the trail, Rubio had frequently expressed his displeasure with Trump, once even tweeting the following:
“We’ve got four more days of campaigning ahead of us, and if you do your part, if you keep making the calls, you keep knocking on the doors, you keep turning out the vote, we’re going to do our part and here’s what’s going to happen on Tuesday night: We’re going to win, from the top to the bottom,” said Rubio to much applause.
“And if we win, we can finally begin to undue the damage of eight years of Barrack Obama.”
Rubio returned to The Villages in August after he declared his intentions to pursue a second term. You can read about all of his previous visits to The Villages HERE.
