At least six past and current Rubio Senate aides, including chief of staff Cesar Conda and his deputy, Terry Sullivan, worked for Romney’s 2008 presidential bid, establishing a direct link and a line of communication between the front-runner for the 2012 GOP nomination and the front-runner in the Republican veepstakes. There’s also a trail of fundraisers, donors and consultants who have overlapping relationships with Rubio and Romney…

“There is a synergy,” Cabrera-Morris, an Orlando-based consultant and lobbyist, told POLITICO. “The people who were with Marco who are now with Romney [believe that] Marco and Romney have most of the same ideals. A lot of us made the decision based on that.”

As for Rubio’s team, she added, “The cream of the crop of Romney now work for Marco Rubio.”

The Rubio-Romney staff connection also highlights a key trait the two men share: They’re establishment favorites who are running extremely disciplined operations — one on the presidential stage, the other in the Senate — that stay on message and don’t veer wildly from one strategy to the next.