Voices: Once again, Rubio is coming from behind

MIAMI -- Apparently I'm not the only one sensing a bit of déjà vu while watching Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio slowly creep up in the polls.

Consider where he started: Rubio came out slowly, polling far behind the older, more experienced heavyweight in Florida politics. He trailed in money raised and establishment support. Many said it wasn't his turn, that he was too young and needed more grooming before ascending to such a lofty position.

That was in 2010, when Rubio rose so quickly in the Florida Republican Senate primary that he forced then-GOP governor Charlie Crist, who had the backing of the party and its major donors, to run as an independent in a failed attempt to fight off the young upstart.

"At one point, (Rubio) was more than 40 points down, and he won it in a walk," says Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida. "That was one of the wonders of modern-day elections. It was probably the most fantastic race in my tenure in Florida. And he's doing it to some degree in this race as well."

Paulson is referring, of course, to the Republican presidential primary race, where Donald Trump still leads in most polls. But it's the fact that Rubio now has passed former Florida governor Jeb Bush in the latest Paste BN/Suffolk University Poll that has many of us in Florida wondering if we're about to see a repeat of that shocking 2010 race.

Rubio was supposed to wait his turn after Bush, who many early on predicted to be the Republican nominee. Rubio has raised significantly less than Bush's $120 million and doesn't have the endorsements or campaign operation Bush enjoys. Yet here we are, with Rubio starting to pull ahead of his Sunshine State rival.

While the circumstances may be similar, Rubio has employed a different game plan this time around. During his 2010 battle against Crist, Rubio cloaked himself in the Tea Party fervor that was sweeping the country. Crist secured the endorsement of the National Republican Senatorial Committee so early in the race -- 18 months before the election -- that it helped Rubio run his entire campaign as the anti-establishment candidate. I was covering the Tea Party's rise during that time and remember the way his growing legion of supporters hailed him as one of the leaders of their movement.

"He came in there and ruffled a lot of feathers," says Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. "When he came in there, he knocked off these people who were standing in line. People liked that."

Now, Rubio is running an entirely different campaign. As a sitting U.S. senator, it's hard to play the role of an outsider in the way that Trump or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are doing. Those same Tea Party faithful I spoke to in 2010 now tell me he's become part of the Washington elite.

So instead, he's using his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to deliver a series of what Smith calls "wonky" speeches around the country. He's sticking to a very conservative script and, until very recently, he wasn't taking the Trump bait as some other candidates have, choosing instead to focus on his own message.

That has helped him maintain a slow and steady rise in a chaotic crowd that is thinning out by the day. Former Texas governor Rick Perry bowed out, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker followed suit, and others are expected to follow their lead. And now Rubio, the youngest candidate in the GOP field, finds himself in a very familiar situation.

Al Cardenas remembers well the last time Rubio was in this position. Cardenas, a lobbyist and longtime force in Florida Republican politics who twice chaired the state party, suggested to Rubio in the months leading up to the 2010 election that he wasn't ready to make the jump from speaker of the Florida House of Representatives all the way to the U.S. Senate.

Now Cardenas is in the same position, serving as a fundraiser and adviser to Bush while cautioning that Rubio isn't ready to lead the Republican ticket. I asked him if he might be making the same mistake again, underestimating Rubio for a second time. Cardenas thought for a moment and said: "None of these things are guaranteed."

Gomez is a Miami-based correspondent for Paste BN.