Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did not want Marco Rubio as his running mate in 2012 because his finances were under investigation in Florida, political strategist Dick Morris told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
Morris told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth that he received a call from someone "who was very highly up with the Romney campaign" who asked him to not push the Florida senator for the vice president in his columns.
Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349, Dish Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
"He said: 'I've noticed that in a lot of your articles lately you've been pushing Rubio for vice president and the governor — meaning Romney — wishes you wouldn't do that, because he's worried that if there's a big hype for Rubio and then he doesn't choose Rubio, there could be a big letdown in the Latino community,'" Morris told Hayworth.
"I said: 'Well, why wouldn't he choose Rubio? He'd be perfect for that,'" he added.
The Romney contact then told Morris in response: 'Look it up, check out his state party credit card, check out the financial issues in Florida — and you'll see why we don't want to do that.'"
Morris said that he followed up on the suggestion and then he "wrote a column about it — and Rubio's people pushed back, and I wrote a column where I said, 'where there's smoke, there's not always fire,' because it wasn't clear that Rubio had done something wrong.
"But clearly, he was under investigation for it — and that's why the Romney people called me."
According to PolitiFact Florida, the state Commission on Ethics dismissed a citizen complaint in 2012 that had been filed against Rubio during his Senate campaign regarding his use of an American Express credit card given to him by the Republican Party of Florida in 2005.
His name surfaced in an Internal Revenue Service investigation of the state GOP's use of party-issued credit cards. Rubio frequently had used his party credit card for personal use while he was a member of the Florida House of Representatives, and later repaid American Express for the expenses,
Reuters reports.