An American Son: A Memoir (42 page)

At nine thirty in the evening we noticed a significant change and slower, more labored breaths. We watched his heartbeat from a pulsing vein on the left side of his neck. I watched it slow and then begin to flutter. Then a long pause, and it pulsed no more. It was 9:43 p.m.

He began his life in a big, happy family. Before he was ten it was all taken from him. He had been on his own from a very young age. In a hard life with many ups and downs, he had built and protected for us the warm and loving family he had lost. And he died where most of us would hope to die, in a room filled with people who loved him.

The next day, I posted a statement on the campaign’s Facebook page, paying tribute to the decent, selfless, ordinary man whose hard work and sacrifices had given me the opportunity to do extraordinary things.

I was confused and troubled in the days following my father’s death. I knew I would have to resume my campaign soon. But I was torn by so many emotions. I felt guilty for ordering the morphine drip, and self-doubt nagged at me. Had I agreed to it too soon? Would he still be alive if I had just waited with him through the night for his anxiety to subside? I was so sad that he had not lived long enough to do the thing he had been so looking forward to: cast a vote for his son for the last time. He would not see my victory, or share in the success that he, more than anyone, had made possible.

I didn’t feel like doing anything. When my grandfather died, I quit Pop Warner and retreated into my home, uninterested in anything for months. I felt the same way now. Except I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I had a wife and children. And I was a candidate for the United States Senate. No matter how bad I felt, I had to go back to work, just as my father had gone to work after his mother died four days before his ninth birthday.

My first major campaign event after my father’s death was a Republican Party dinner in Orlando on September 10. I didn’t want to be there. I just wanted to give my speech, get in my car and drive home. I avoided mingling with the crowd outside the banquet hall and sat in a hotel coffee shop with Jeanette until it was time to take the stage. I spoke for about fifteen minutes, and ended the speech with a reflection:

My father had cared all his life for the people he loved. He had hated to see me suffer. I still remember the look of anguish on his face when the doctor told him his six-year-old son needed surgery. He had helped raise Barbara’s boys when her husband was in prison. He watched the movie
King Kong
hundreds of times because it was Landy’s favorite. I can still see him carrying Danny, who had whooping cough, racing out of the house in a panic because he thought the little boy had stopped breathing.

At the end of his life his children and grandchildren had cared for him. My nephew had cradled him and carried him to his wheelchair. Barbara
had smoothed ointment on his skin to treat a painful infection he had developed. Veronica spent the night watching over him at the hospital. I had made the terrible mistake of urging him to try chemotherapy, and later made the decision to give him morphine. It is a natural part of life when children become their parents’ caretakers, though it might not seem natural at the time. It’s not easy to become accustomed to such a poignant role reversal. It’s harder still to become accustomed to the loss of someone you had so long depended on, who had loved you without limit.

It was hard to believe he was gone. I caught myself many times that fall about to call him to let him know I would be on the news that night. I still do sometimes.

A
REPUTABLE POLL, RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 9, REVEALED a sudden surge of support. Several other polls confirmed I now led a three-way race by double digits. We attributed the good news to my first television ad, which had prominently featured my parents. The ad had nearly run its course, and had been very effective. Had we waited a few days more before we started advertising, the ad wouldn’t have been seen. I wouldn’t have allowed it on the air after my father’s death. It would have felt like I was exploiting his death for political gain. But we had launched it before my father entered the hospital. It was his final contribution to my success.

The first debate with all three candidates was scheduled for September 17 on Univision. I was more nervous about that debate than any of the others. The debate would be broadcast to a Spanish-language audience. The moderator would ask questions in Spanish, which would be translated for the candidates. We would respond in English, and our answers would be translated back into Spanish. The format posed an interesting dilemma for me. Obviously, I didn’t need a translator—I speak Spanish fluently. But both Meek and Crist objected to the request that I be allowed to give my answers in Spanish. In the art of persuasion, it’s not just what you say, but how you say it, and I would have preferred the audience heard my voice and not a translator’s. My opponents recognized it would give me an
advantage and refused to allow it. I worried about how the audience would react. They knew I was Cuban and spoke Spanish, and they might think I was speaking in English to downplay my Hispanic heritage.

The dominant issue in the debate would also be a challenge. Univision executives made no secret of their support for immigration reform, and they used the network to advocate for it. Of all the candidates, my position on immigration was most in conflict with Univision’s, and I suspected the debate would turn into a one-hour argument about immigration.

The debate was held at the Univision affiliate’s studio in Doral. I knew the place well. I had worked there as a political commentator in the 2008 election. I knew all the people who worked there, and considered many of them friends. When we arrived, we were taken to a small greenroom just off the main studio. I was nervous but well prepared. We were brought into the studio for a quick microphone check, and then returned to the greenroom until it was time for the debate to begin.

There was a delay. The Meek campaign had complained about a small portable fan that had been placed behind Crist’s podium. Crist usually had a fan at his feet when he spoke in public. The few times he spoke without one, he perspired profusely. Meek claimed the fan was distracting. Furthermore, he insisted that if Crist had a fan, all the candidates should have one. The dispute was nothing more than a head game, of course, and I found it mildly amusing. If Crist and Meek wanted to fight about a fan, that was fine with me. Crist threatened to walk out if he wasn’t allowed to keep his fan. Meek’s people finally relented, and it was time to take our places in the studio.

As I stepped up to the podium, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I spotted Jeanette sitting in the front row of the audience. She gave me a big smile to remind me to smile. Her mother sat on one side of her while my mother sat on her other side, and gave me a look of motherly pride I had seen many times before. The intro music started and our first three-candidate debate was under way.

The immigration issue certainly played a prominent role in the debate. I was asked why I didn’t support comprehensive reform and the DREAM Act. I began by reminding the audience that immigration wasn’t just an issue I had studied and debated. It was an experience I had lived. My parents and grandparents were immigrants. My brother was an immigrant.
My aunts and uncles were immigrants. My wife’s family are immigrants. I lived in a neighborhood of immigrants. I know how important legal immigration is and how problematic illegal immigration could be. I simply believed the immigration reforms that Congress had considered went too far and would create incentives for others to come here illegally.

I agreed that we needed to do something to help children whose parents had immigrated illegally, who had grown up here and were American in every way except legally, and were at risk of deportation. But the DREAM Act had been written too broadly. We needed more targeted legislation if we were to address the issue without exacerbating our illegal immigration problem.

I was also asked whether I supported making English the official language of the United States, one of the most misunderstood issues of our time. Virtually every important document in the United States is written in English. Our Constitution, our federal and state laws, private contracts and the tests that are administered in our schools are all written in English. English has been the predominant language of Americans since we were thirteen separate colonies. It is our de facto official language, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with recognizing that fact. Some people argue that declaring English to be our official language would prohibit other languages from being spoken in this country. But the government can’t tell you what language to speak at home. It can’t tell a restaurant owner what language to use on his menus.

I think everyone should learn other languages. Knowledge of foreign languages is economically empowering and culturally rewarding. But English is our unifying language. We can all speak whatever language we like here. But we should have one language in common, and given our history, it’s obvious it should be English. Some critics argue that it’s nativist or racist to support English as our official language. I think that’s absurd. Learning to speak English is more than a sign of respect from immigrants for their new country. Knowledge of English is necessary to the economic progress and social assimilation of every American citizen.

On almost every issue we discussed in the debate, Crist managed to take a position to my left—a position he hadn’t taken when he was running as a Republican and trying to appeal to conservative primary voters. Near the end of the debate, I decided to call attention to his wholesale
reinvention as a postpartisan statesman. “Everyone sees what you’re doing,” I told him. “Everyone gets it. For twenty years, you ran as a Republican on the same things you’re now criticizing me for.” I thought it was an effective reminder of what everyone in the audience already knew. Unfortunately, the effect was lost in translation.

The debate was for the most part uneventful. No one scored a knockout or made a major gaffe. However, some reporters thought my positions on English as our official language, the DREAM Act and Arizona’s immigration law would hurt me with Hispanic voters. The general consensus, though, which I agreed with, was there had been no clear winner. Further lessening its impact, Univision’s Florida affiliates broadcast the debate at eleven o’clock on Friday night.

Crist had shaken up the race in the summer when he withdrew from the Republican primary, and breathed new life into his campaign during the oil spill. But we had been patient, and had faith in our campaign plan. We were confident we could take back the initiative when we began running our television ads. We believed Democrats would rally to the Democratic candidate in the fall. And we knew the race would again become primarily a debate over the direction of the country. It was hard to see that in the summer, when many felt we were letting the race get away from us. But we had stuck to our course.

Now I was the front-runner again. The polls consistently gave me a double-digit lead. We were exactly where we wanted to be. There was much work left to do. But off in the distance, for the first time, I could see the finish line.

When he began his campaign as an independent, Crist had promised the return of the happy warrior, vowing he wouldn’t run any more negative ads. As summer gave way to fall and his lead in the polls vanished, he changed his mind again.

In late September, he ran a TV ad criticizing my spending record as speaker and claiming he had vetoed $500 million I had “tried to sneak” into the budget, including $1.5 million for a rowing center and $800,000 to renovate the fields where I played flag football. The ad backfired on him. It was blatantly misleading. The spending had been proposed and promoted by others. I had nothing to do with their inclusion in the budget. But the ad’s real damage was to Crist’s new image as postpartisan statesman.
Rather than use a narrator’s voice in the ad, Crist looked directly into the camera and attacked me himself. Nothing could have contradicted his happy warrior image more than the image of Crist as an attack dog, broadcast across the state at his expense.

Crist’s allies opened a 527, a tax-exempt political fund, to promote Crist’s candidacy. They sent a mail piece titled “The Real Rubio” to Republican voters across the state. The front of the piece had an image of what appeared to be militant student protesters, along with a picture of Che Guevara over my left shoulder. On the back, it identified several bills that would have given children of undocumented immigrants in state tuition rates and health insurance. The mailer was designed to tamp down Republican enthusiasm for me by raising doubts about my positions on illegal immigration.