Matt Gaetz Floats Possible Run For Marco Rubio’s Senate Seat

Will Neal
·2-min read
Matt Gaetz speaks during an RNC session in Milwaukee.
Chicago Tribune / TNS

Not content with having left Congress under a cloud of sordid allegations that include sex trafficking and illicit drug use, Matt Gaetz appears to be weighing up a run for the Senate.

Addressing the crowds on Sunday at a Turning Point USA conference in Arizona, the former Florida congressman said he’d consider taking a pop at Marco Rubio’s soon-to-be-vacated seat so as to better rail against those who opposed his nomination to be Donald Trump’s new Attorney General.

Gaetz was last month forced to drop out of the running to be the nation’s next top prosecutor amid a political firestorm over whether the House Ethics Committee ought to release the results of a long-running inquiry into allegations of sex crimes leveled at the former representative.

Those included claims he’d attended up to 10 drug-fueled orgies, some of them in the company of underage girls. The report itself is finally due for release on Monday.

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“Many have asked which perch I will be fighting from next,” he said at Sunday’s rally. “And some of you have throughout this conference even given me some suggestions.”

He went on, “My fellow Floridians have asked me to eye the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. Maybe special counsel to go after the insider trading for my former colleagues in Congress. It seems I may not have had enough support in the United States Senate. Maybe I’ll just run for Marco Rubio’s vacant seat… and join some of those folks!”

Rubio is expected to resign his senatorial seat when Trump takes office in January so as to take up a new role as Secretary of State.

There’d initially been speculation that Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter in law and a former co-chair of the RNC, would succeed Rubio in the senate, until she announced on Saturday she’d be taking herself out of the running.

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