Former Rubio delegates push senator as Trump’s VP
Five unbound Louisiana delegates who were formerly committed to Marco Rubio are asking presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to consider the Florida senator as his running mate.
{mosads}In a letter released Thursday, the delegates announced that they would cast their support to Trump on the first ballot at the convention and asked that he consider Rubio as his vice president.
“There is a need to build consensus in our party and support the candidate who can not only lead our country in the right direction but also win in the general election,” the letter states.
“We firmly believe the process of achieving consensus involves not only supporting the presumptive nominee but also asking him to listen to the will of the other voters who may not have originally supported him. We would request Mr. Trump consider our candidate, Senator Marco Rubio, as a potential running mate this fall as his presence on the ticket would further bring our party a united voice.”
The letter is signed by Louisiana delegates Stephanie Berault, Kirk Williamson, Jennifer LeBlanc, Leslie Tassin and Luke Letlow, the chief of staff for Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.).
Those five were previously bound to Rubio but became free to support whomever they choose when the Florida senator suspended his campaign.
Rubio and Trump memorably clashed earlier in the primary, going after one another in a string of increasingly personal attacks. Trump ultimately knocked Rubio, whom he called “Little Marco,” out of the race after defeating him in his home state of Florida.
Last week, Rubio appeared to be warming to the idea of a Trump nomination, saying the businessman’s “performance has improved significantly.” But in a CNN interview this week, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant called reports of any détente between the two “false.”
The unbound delegates were at the center of controversy earlier in the cycle when media reports indicated that they’d be casting their support to Ted Cruz despite Trump’s victory in Louisiana.
Trump narrowly defeated Cruz in the March 5 primary there, although the margin was close enough that each candidate ended up taking 18 delegates.
The support from the unbound delegates would have given Cruz a victory in the state.
The reports infuriated Trump. He declared that he’d sue the state party and seek to have the delegates disqualified over what he described as a rigged process designed to block him from the nomination.
At the time, four of the delegates told The Hill that media reports about them supporting Cruz were wrong and that they were undecided and intended to stay unbound going into the convention.