MIAMI — Long before news broke that Marco Rubio had lost the Florida Republican primary on Tuesday and was suspending his campaign, even his biggest supporters had a feeling that their favorite Cuban-American son wasn't going to pull off the comeback they'd all been waiting for.
Gilbert Gonzalez voted for Rubio in the Cuban-American enclave of Hialeah early in the morning, but only to try and steal away some support from Trump. Ernesto Pereira also voted for Rubio, but only to shore up the senator's credentials as a possible running mate to the eventual Republican nominee.
"He's a good boy," said Clara Pereira, 66. "He just needs a little more experience."
Rubio returned home to Miami on Tuesday night to announce that he was ending his presidential bid during a small rally at Florida International University. He thanked his supporters for their work, but said they ran into a "political storm" that won by appealing to the fears and worries of American voters.
"People are angry and they're really frustrated," he said. "After tonight it is clear that while we were on the right side, this year we will not be on the winning side."
Rubio had hinted in the days leading up to Tuesday's primary that he may stay in the race even if he lost in Florida. But instead, his supporters were left torn over his decision to end his campaign.
Juan Velez, 40, at first said he supported Rubio's decision to bow out, saying that was the rational decision after racking up so many losses. But then, he changed his mind and said Rubio should stay in the race to help the GOP block the front-runner — and winner of Florida's primary — Donald Trump .
"Divide and conquer," said Velez, a Miami accountant.
Such a debate was once unthinkable in Rubio's home state, and especially in Hialeah, a working class city where many Cubans first moved after arriving from the island 90 miles south. Rubio has long embraced his working-class Cuban heritage, constantly referencing how his father worked as a bartender and his mother as a maid after arriving in the 1950s. And the community embraced him back.
But over the years, Molina said Rubio has lost those ideals.
"He stopped swimming against the current and started swimming with it," said Molina, 65. "He's let himself be controlled by outside interests. Now, I feel the only candidate who's not with the establishment or Wall Street is named Ted Cruz ."
"I think (Rubio)'s got a great future in the party. I think he's doing a good job, he's intelligent, he understands foreign policy," said Martinez, who briefly served as the mayor of Hialeah during the early 1990s. "But to me, the biggest problem we're facing is the economy, and Donald Trump is the one who can fix it."
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