Lunch with Marco Rubio

Tom selfee, with me to his right and John with the beard

As many of you know, I use this blog as a component of my Presidential fundraising activities. Last time round, we hit $25K for Mitt, and I'm hoping to do a good bit better this time with a VICTORIOUS Marco Rubio. I made a mistake yesterday that we had passed the $11k mark--we are actually past the $12K mark, a point not hit until 29 July 2012 last time!  I am very grateful to those who have contributed and look forward to a whole lot more where this came from.

One of the ways I hope to raise more money this time is to be a little more sophisticated about my networking--and to that end, I worked with a good friend of mine at a DC law firm to be part of the sponsors of a luncheon held yesterday, midday.  Of the approximately 100 people who joined in the crowd, six were recruited by me.

And so, I arrived at the site of the luncheon at 1130, thirty minutes before start, and in the lobby were two of my recruitees, brother Tom and Navy buddy John.  We all signed in and were told to head up to the 11th floor, which we did-even though I was unaware that there was any activity for which we had signed up being held on the 11th floor.

As you might expect--talking about the Navy

We were ushered into a small room with seating for about 25 and a two seats in the front, one of which was occupied by a moderator of some sort. Wow, I thought. I'm getting a hell of a lot more for my money than I thought I would. And then they brought Senator Rubio in. Damn, the dude looks young. I didn't look that young when I was that young. He greeted all of us with a very sunny disposition, and sat down and began talking---about agriculture. That's right.  We had been ushered into the 1130 agriculture event, rather than the 1200 defense event, and this one was full of farmers and lobbyists who had clearly paid more than we had. I looked at Tom and John and said, "oh well, as long as we are here."

And we listened to Rubio talk about agricultural issues just as intelligently as he has discussed everything else on the campaign. He gets a lot of crap from some for his support of sugar subsidies, but he explained it yesterday his way--the free market does a lot of things well, but not everything. If the world sugar market were free, he'd support getting rid of the subsidies (you can use this logic for a lot of farm subsidies, as a matter of fact), because then our farmers could compete on an even playing field. But since they can't without price support, farmers would sell, the land would be developed AND NEVER AGAIN BE PART OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY.  He had clearly had to make this argument before, because it was polished, quick, unemotional, and straightforward. When this little affair to which we had not been invited ended, we slipped out quickly before the selfie taking began with the Ag folks and went back down to the first floor to hang with the defense types.

Tom and his buddy

This affair was a little less cozy, again, with about 100 people (all of the Ag folks joined) in a room about the size of  large classroom. There were several standup tables about which one could throw down the light lunch that was provided, and in the front of the room was a podium. Behind the podium was one of those large projection walls made up of a lot of flatscreen TV's, and it was playing a slow jam of Rubio greatest hits photos.  Rubio showed up and began to work the room--we (me and a few of my homeys) were in a solid spot to intercept/be intercepted, and we each had a brief moment to chat with Rubio.

He then proceed to the podium and riffed for about fifteen minutes--but not before a kind of funny, pretty human moment. When he got to  the podium, he begged our indulgence for a second, and then took out his cell phone. I began to think some kind of crappy setup piece going to happen, and then he began to evidently type a text message or email. Very quickly, but when he put it down, you could see he was a little embarrassed. He explained to us that his kids school lunch program has a feature where there is an automated account that occasionally needs filling. Well, evidently, one of his kids' lunch accounts ran out as he was coming in to talk with us, and he needed to authorize an account filling so his kid could get lunch. It was a really human moment with a Dad--before a surreal moment when we stood 8 feet from a guy who may someday be President.

It was a great event--and there was a lot of enthusiasm in the room.  Lot of time left, and a lot of campaigning to do.