Marco Rubio’s prospective presidentiality: Latinx politics, race/ethnicity, and the presidency

Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) presidential prospects have been the subject of media speculation from the moment of his election to the Senate in 2010, and these discussions only intensified when Rubio was considered a potential candidate for vice-president in the 2012 election and then was an actual candidate in 2016. This essay analyzes these discourses—including comparisons between Rubio and Obama, discussion about Rubio’s appeal to Hispanic/ Latinx voters, and his potential to be the first Hispanic/Latinx vicepresident or president—and the competing and sometimes problematic ways that they figure the representational power of the presidency, ethnic political candidates, and Latinidad and Latinx communities. The study helps to grasp shifts in racial presidentialities in the post-Obama era and to discern some of the ways that Latinidad is deployed in political and electoral discourses.