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Rubio wins GOP nomination to seek second term

Murphy appeared confident in the final weeks of the election, virtually ignoring Grayson and focusing instead on Rubio.

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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio speaks to supporters as he stops to thank volunteers at a phone bank on the final day before the Florida primary election on August 29, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Grayson, a fiery liberal known for brash comments, relied mostly on small donors and feuded with party leaders.

And even Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., whom Rubio says he wants to prevent from becoming majority leader.

“We have a choice”.

In other words, it’s shaping up to be your typical Florida Senate race. Democrats hope a landslide Clinton wave could help carry Murphy into the Senate.

Murphy defeated a candidate overloaded with baggage, from domestic violence allegations to an abrasive personality to criticism of his Cayman Islands investment fund. Murphy himself was under fire for exaggerating his business experience and academic credentials, as a legislator with few achievements, whose wealthy father bankrolled his political rise. Darren Soto beat back an attempt by Dena Grayson – wife of the incumbent – to fill her husband’s seat.

Soto has spent 10 years in Tallahassee, but Grayson gave up his seat he chose to try a run for Washington.

Murphy campaign volunteer Joe Buch says Rubio’s failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination is a good sign for his candidate. “They are risky and they will leave us vulnerable as a people and as a nation”, said Rubio. “And so you may ask yourself, well, how can Patrick Murphy who has don’t nothing in his probate life to be successful and done nothing in his four years of Congress which he’ll have to answer for?”

Murphy is hoping that kind of support will win him that U.S. Senate spot. “And the answer is, he has this sense of entitlement”. While many candidates chose to drop out of the race once Rubio announced he was back in, Beruff made a decision to stay in, saying he’s “fed up with the status quo in Washington”. “As you know, after my race ended in March for the presidency I was prepared to become a private citizen”, Rubio told supporters after the result.

Beruff built his campaign around blasting Rubio for his poor Senate attendance record while he was running for president and trying to plant seeds of doubt in Republican voters’ minds about whether Rubio would even serve out a new six-year-term or leave early to run for president again.

“Clearly, Marco Rubio doesn’t understand that campaigning and debating isn’t governing”. Trump is behind Hillary Clinton in most presidential polls, and if he loses, the GOP could opt to nominate a more moderate, establishment-approved nominee in 2020. Grayson’s 17.7 percent was a distant second, ending the challenge of the controversial representative of Florida’s Ninth District. During a watch party tonight in Kissimmee Rubio thanked voters for getting his one step closer to a return to Washington.

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A similar dynamic was at play in the Jacksonville-area 4th District, being vacated by Crenshaw, where former county sheriff John Rutherford beat Hans Tanzler III, an attorney, and Lake Ray, a state lawmaker, who had both sought to portray Rutherford as insufficiently conservative for the safely Republican seat.

Senate Showdowns Highlight Florida Primary Election