“I would be stunned if he didn’t run now,” says one Republican strategist, who as recently as last week believed a Rubio campaign was unlikely.
“You can just see a reenergized Marco Rubio,” says Colorado senator Cory Gardner, who had a similar change of heart about running for the Senate in 2014. Gardner said it started after Rubio returned from the presidential campaign, but “it’s been building and building. And then all of a sudden you see doors opening to the fact that he is possibly entertaining this, and [the optimism has] grown even more.”
According to one GOP lawmaker, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has told representative Tom Massie, a fellow Kentuckian, that he bets Rubio will run.
“I think he’s open-minded to it,” says South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham. “But time will tell.”
Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told National Journal that he thinks it will happen, as well. And Republicans say the sentiments being expressed in private are more optimistic than they had been in weeks past, when getting Rubio in the race was seen as a much longer shot.
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