America
Marco Rubio announces presidential run
Washington, April 13
Florida Senator Marco Rubio told his top donors on Monday that he will seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
He
shared the news with a small circle of supporters in a conference call
hours before a rally Monday evening at Miami's Freedom Tower.
Rubio, 43, said he views the 2016 contest as moment to turn the page on the past and look toward the future.
"The
Republican Party, for the first time in a long time, has a chance in
this election to be the party of the future," he told people who have
financed his previous campaigns, describing himself as the best
candidate to present the GOP as a party that will broaden opportunity.
"I
feel uniquely qualified to not just make that argument, but to outline
the policies that we need to have in order to achieve it," Rubio said.
"Just
yesterday, we heard from a leader from yesterday who wants to take us
back to yesterday, but I feel that this country has always been about
tomorrow," the Cuban-American lawmaker said, alluding to former
Secretary of Stare Hillary Clinton's announcement on Sunday that she is
running for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
Immigration rights
groups plan to protest outside the Freedom Tower during the Rubio event,
challenging the senator over his "contradictory positions" in the
issue.
While Rubio was one of eight senators who shepherded a
bipartisan immigration reform bill through the Senate, he later voted
against funding the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals initiative, aimed at giving relief to undocumented migrants
brought to the US as children, the Florida Immigrant Coalition said in a
statement.
Rubio joins a Republican field that already includes
two of his Senate colleagues, Ted Cruz of Texas and Kentucky's Rand
Paul, and an announcement is expected soon from former Florida Governor
Jeb Bush, the son and younger brother, respectively, of presidents
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.