U.S. Congresswoman Val Demings (D-FL) won her primary race and will face incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in November. Tuesday night each lawmaker gave a speech celebrating their wins. Demings served up a fiery and passionate promise to protect constitutional rights, including a woman’s right to choose, and Rubio complained that his new opponent follows the rules of the House, instituted because of COVID, and occasionally votes from home by proxy.
The GOP Senator from Florida sounded very angry about having to fly to Washington, D.C. to represent the people of the Sunshine State, something he promised in 2016 he would never do again.
Many probably remember that in 2016, running for president as a freshman U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio swore he would not ever run for any political office again unless he won the White House.
He lost the Florida GOP presidential primary to candidate Donald Trump in March of that year, and suspended his campaign. But just nine days after the Pulse Orlando nightclub mass shooting that June, a horrific hate crime terror attack that targeted LGBTQ and Hispanic people, Rubio announced he would run for re-election, claiming he was needed in the Senate because of the anti-LGBTQ massacre that took the lives of 49 people and wounded 53 more.
Rubio, who frequently starts his day by tweeting a passage from the Christian Bible, is extremely anti-LGBTQ, yet used the mass murder of LGBTQ Floridians to restart his political career.
According to The Recount (below), Rubio has one of the worst attendance records in the U.S. Senate, a body he made very clear in 2016 he did not want to return to. Yet Tuesday night he opted to attack his new Democratic opponent not on her actual record, but, as he put it, for voting “from her pajamas.”
After winning her primary Demings on Tuesday told supporters, “I dream of an America where we protect constitutional rights, like a woman’s right to choose. I’ve said it along this campaign trail, let me say it again: We’re not going back. We’re not. There are women and men and people of all races and ages, who suffered, bled, and died for us to have the constitutional rights that we enjoy. We’re not going back to being treated like second class citizens. We’re not going back to being treated like property. We will continue to fight and fight and fight some more for a woman’s right to choose. Do you believe in that, America?”
Meanwhile, Sen. Rubio attacked Demings for voting in “her pajamas.”
“Even the House of Representatives have become a work from home place,” Rubio lamented. “You know that my opponent, Val Demings, how many times she’s voted from her pajamas or wherever she was wearing? Because they have this thing called proxy voting. She can be anywhere on the planet,” Rubio complained.
He then went after Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist, before going back to attacking Demings.
“The nominee – appears to be the next nominee for Florida Governor for the Democrats, Charlie Crist. He was once a Republican and he ran as an independent, and as a vegetarian,” Rubio snarked. “Now he’s, you know, a Democrat. Charlie Crist. He hasn’t even I don’t even think he’s been in Washington for a year. They can vote remotely. They can work remotely. You can’t work remotely,” Rubio again complained.
Watch Rubio’s and Demings’ speeches above or at this link.