All eyes will be on the Sunshine States junior senator Tuesday when Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a rising star with conservatives across the nation takes to the Senate floor to make his maiden speech.
Rubio sent out a message to supporters Friday morning, releasing a web video to prepare for the event.
For over five months now, I have been honored to serve you in the U.S. Senate and be your voice on behalf of the principles and ideas that have made America exceptional for centuries, said the Miami native.
Since our nation's founding, the Senate floor is where our leaders have stood, debated and ultimately made consequential decisions to address the great challenges of their time. Next week, I will have my first chance.
Rubio is scheduled to speak at 2:45 Tuesday afternoon. His team will have the speech up on the senators YouTube and Facebook pages. It will also be televised on C-SPAN 2, which covers the Senate.
The new senator, whose family will travel from Florida to the nation's capital to watch the speech, will touch on why he sought the Senate seat and his aspirations for the remainder of his term.
While Rubio has been in office for almost six months, Senate tradition maintains that freshman senators put off their first speeches. Traditionally, when they make their maiden speeches, new senators receive special attention from their colleagues. Rubio, the last of the freshmen senators to give his maiden speech, should receive the same courtesy.
Rubio may have waited nearly six months to make his first address, but this is not uncommon in the Senates history. During the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, newly elected senators would often wait more than a year.
There were exceptions, of course. One of the giants of the Senate's history -- Robert La Follette of Wisconsin -- waited three months before giving his maiden speech in 1906, and he dragged it out over the course of three days. His Senate colleagues let Fighting Bob know what they thought of his impertinence by also breaking with tradition: A number of them left the chamber before he finished. A year later, newly elected Jefferson Davis of Arkansas, a colorful Southern demagogue who shared the same name as the Confederate president, caused something of a ruckus when he waited only nine days to give his maiden address.
While many senators, as Rubio, will use their maiden speeches to outline their agenda, others have more tactical reasons. In March 1949, newly elected Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas offered a defense of cloture and the filibuster, not appealing to racism or emotion the way that many Southern senators did, but using legalistic arguments. That tactic was a winner for LBJ. It caught the eye of Senate powerbroker Richard Russell of Georgia -- and set the Texan on the path to becoming one of the greatest masters of the Senate that chamber has ever seen.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (850) 727-0859 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
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