Yet more so than most of his Re­pub­lic­an rivals, Ru­bio’s adult life is the defin­i­tion of ca­reer politi­cian. Six­teen of the 19 years since he gradu­ated from law school have been spent in elect­ive of­fice. And dur­ing those three years that he was not, plus all 11 years on the West Miami City Com­mis­sion and in the Flor­ida House, Ru­bio worked as a gov­ern­ment-af­fairs law­yer, help­ing cli­ents get their pro­pos­als past zon­ing boards and oth­er agen­cies.

After his fi­nal ses­sion as speak­er, Ru­bio be­came a con­sult­ant (he could not leg­ally “lobby” the state le­gis­lature for two years) to some of the same en­tit­ies whose state grants he had helped over­see as speak­er. (Crit­ics at the time called it lob­by­ing in all but name.) The fin­an­cial dis­clos­ures he filed as a Sen­ate can­did­ate and in his first year as a sen­at­or show he earned $600,000 that way from the time he left Tal­l­a­hassee to the time he ar­rived in Wash­ing­ton.

“He’s had some very luc­rat­ive years,” said Tampa GOP con­sult­ant Chris In­gram, who sup­por­ted Ru­bio for a time in 2009 be­fore sour­ing on him.

Vic­tor Crist, a Re­pub­lic­an who served in the le­gis­lature with Ru­bio and is now a county com­mis­sion­er in Tampa’s Hills­bor­ough County (and no re­la­tion to Charlie), said he can un­der­stand how be­com­ing a big shot in the le­gis­lature can get someone un­ac­cus­tomed to deal­ing with money in­to trouble.