Florida Republican voters awarded Donald Trump his biggest haul of delegates so far and knocked home-state U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio out of the presidential race on Tuesday while Hillary Clinton easily won the state's Democratic primary.
Trump and Clinton celebrated their victories less than three miles apart. While Trump spoke to his supporters in a ballroom with 17 chandeliers at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Clinton held an event across the Intracoastal Waterway that drew more than 1,000 of her supporters to the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach.
Trump supporters hadn’t even filed into the ballroom when CNN declared him and Clinton the Florida winners at 8 p.m. As Trump backers began arriving, they paid little attention to TV sets that showed Rubio announcing he was suspending his campaign.
Trump’s Florida victory and a win in North Carolina widens his delegate lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Cruz hoped to emerge from Tuesday as the lone rival to Trump, but won’t get his wish. After winning his home state Tuesday, Kasich vowed to press on with his campaign.
Clinton had victories in North Carolina and Ohio under her belt when she took the stage in West Palm Beach. She congratulated Democratic rival Bernie Sanders on a “vigorous campaign” and directed much of her remarks at Trump and the general election.
“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” Clinton said. She said the next president must “bring the country together” and she took aim at some of Trump’s most controversial stances.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, barring all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong — it makes him wrong,” Clinton said.
Trump, whose candidacy has bitterly divided the Republican Party, made a plea for party unity when he spoke at around 10 p.m.
“We have to bring our party together. We have to bring it together. We have something happening that actually makes the Republican Party probably the biggest political story anywhere in the world…Millions of people are coming in to vote,” Trump said.
“We have a great opportunity. And the people that are voting – Democrats are coming in, the independents are coming in and — very, very important — people that never voted before,” Trump said.
Trump’s rivals have accused him of stoking anger.
“There is anger,” Trump said. But he defended his supporters. “They’re not angry people. But they want to see the country properly run.”
Trump’s Florida victory gives him all 99 of the state’s delegates. When the Republican Party of Florida approved the winner-take-all format last year, it seemed designed to give a big advantage to Floridians Rubio or former Gov. Jeb Bush.
But as with so much conventional wisdom in GOP politics over the past year, the scenario the experts envisioned for Florida was not to be.
When the GOP candidates gathered in Orlando in November for a presidential summit, political outsiders Trump and Ben Carson got louder applause than home-staters Bush and Rubio. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who lives in West Palm Beach, endorsed Trump last week.
Bush, the early establishment favorite who was repeatedly slammed by Trump as a “low-energy” candidate, dropped out of the race last month. Rubio then became a target of Trumpian derision, branded “Little Marco” by the front runner. Rubio briefly responded with a barrage of insults at Trump that undercut the aspirational tone Rubio had crafted for his campaign.
Rubio, in the penultimate rally of his campaign on Monday in West Palm Beach, said he regretted his brief insult-comic phase — but noted that he got more media coverage while he was attacking Trump.
Trump offered brief, kind words for Rubio on Tuesday night.
“I want to congratulate Marco Rubio on having run a really tough campaign. He’s tough, he’s smart and he’s got a great future,” Trump said.
Cruz, who had some bitter exchanges with Rubio during the campaign, also offered compliments on Tuesday night.
“Marco is a friend. He is a colleague. He ran a strong, optimistic campaign,” Cruz said in Houston.
In failing to win a primary in his home state, Rubio joins a list that includes Republicans Ron Paul of Texas (2008 and 2012), George H.W. Bush of Texas (who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and later became his running mate) and John Anderson of Illinois (who went on to run as an independent in 1980).
Rubio, whose Senate seat is up for re-election this year, has said in the past he would not seek his seat if his presidential campaign fizzled. He didn’t address his political future Tuesday night and didn’t offer an endorsement to any of the remaining candidates.
Rubio supporters had just begun arriving at an arena at Florida International University in Miami when Rubio took the stage at 8:11 p.m.
“We are on the right side but not the winning side,” Rubio said.
“America is in the middle of a real political storm, a tsunami,” said Rubio, who was joined by his wife and children. “We should have seen this coming.”
As he had in the final days of the primary, Rubio criticized the harsh tone of the nomination battle and called for a “new political establishment” that wouldn’t disregard the will of Republican voters.
At times, his supporters refused to let him be heard, chanting his name and cheering. They groaned loudly when Rubio said he was suspending his campaign.
Rubio spoke for 18 minutes, and when he was done, the music that had greeted him fell silent and his supporters filed out of the arena.
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