By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Capping a strong week in Minnesota with endorsements, a state office and new state staff, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio on Tuesday visited Minnesota to erect a bastion against other candidates’ dominance in the race.

 

“We have a chance to make America better than it has ever been. But we have to do it in 2016,” Rubio told a crowd of 1,600 in a Minneapolis hotel ballroom. “But first we have to win …. We have to nominate somebody in the Republican Party who has a chance of winning the election.”

If Minnesota Republicans believe Rubio’s pitch that he is that candidate, the state could serve as the first to give the Florida senator a win. More than any other Republican campaign, Rubio is working to make it so.

His campaign opened a small Minnesota headquarters in a suburban office park in Maple Grove last week. Three Rubio staffers, fresh from the caucus slog in Iowa, landed in Minnesota at about the same time and Rubio gained endorsement support from former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty and current U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen this week. They joined U.S. Rep. John Kline, who previously announced his support for Rubio.

“What we need if we want to win is a candidate who can not only speak to all of us in this room but just as effectively speak to the people who aren’t in this room. Who might never consider coming into this room because they hate politics and they distrust Republicans,” Hennepin County Commission Jeff Johnson, who is Rubio’s Minnesota campaign chairman, told the crowd Tuesday. “Marco Rubio is able to do that.”

Rubio promised he could unite not only Republicans but the country.

“When I’m president of the United States, I will never ask you to be angry at another group of Americans so that you’ll vote for me,” Rubio said in a swipe aimed at both President Barack Obama and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.

Although Rubio touched on foreign and domestic policy, the benefit of a free market for working people, his immigrant parents’ struggles and other weighty subjects, both he and the assembled supporters gave the event in a ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis a lighthearted feel.

He joked about the campaign, mocking his repetition of a line about Obama in a debate and referring to his inability to quite tell where he was or how long ago he said what.

“We are going to be jumping around a lot of places,” said Rubio, who began the day with a speech in Nevada and will end the day in Michigan.

During his 35-minute speech, the crowd — which included a significant contingent of established Republicans as well as newcomers to the political scene — repeatedly interrupted him with comments of their own. They gave him advice — “kill it in the debate Thursday,” said one man. Encouragement — when he said that to get anything accomplished he had to first win, someone shouted “you are going to win.” And they added other kindly shouts to his spiel.