Carlo Allegri/Reuters
After waffling about whether he would actually run to keep his Senate seat after his unsuccessful presidential bid, Marco Rubio won the Republican primary in Florida on Tuesday night. He easily defeated businessman Carlos Beruff, who marketed himself as a kind of mini-Donald Trump. He will face Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, who dispatched the embattled Alan Grayson.
Despite voter unrest, establishment favorite Debbie Wasserman Schultz easily dispatched Bernie Sanders-backed law professor Tim Canova in the Sunshine State’s Democratic primary.
Rubio managed to keep a reservoir of goodwill in the state despite his disappointing run for president, and the Rubio-Murphy race will be among those that decide which party holds the Senate majority in 2017.
Wasserman Schultz survived an onslaught of discontent fueled by supporters of Bernie Sanders, but the Vermont senator never campaigned for Canova, and the momentum he created during his presidential run now appears to have stalled. Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party’s convention, was never in any serious electoral danger in her own district.