Carlos Lopez-Cantera says he’s running for Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat in Florida

Carlos Lopez-Cantera, the former state lawmaker who rose from relative obscurity as Miami-Dade County property appraiser to become next-in-line to the Florida governor, will run for the U.S. Senate, casting himself as the heir to Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

“I’m running because I want to work for you, to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Lopez-Cantera said Wednesday in a YouTube video released in advance of a scheduled announcement speech at 1:30 p.m. in the Miami-Dade suburb of Doral.

His nascent campaign posted the video in English and in Spanish, a nod to a candidacy that will rely heavily on Hispanic Republicans in voter-rich South Florida to support one of their own in a primary field likely to include contenders several of the state’s disparate political regions.

Lopez-Cantera, 41, is close friends with Rubio — he sat on stage with the incumbent senator when Rubio launched his presidential bid — and cuts a similar campaign figure for a GOP hungry for diversity: a fresh-faced Cuban-American with a young family. He and his wife, Renee, who works in the Miami Herald’s circulation department, have two daughters.

“As a family, we’ve decided that I’m running for the U.S. Senate so your kids, and mine, can continue to live in the kind of country that gave my family the blessings of liberty and freedom that only America offers,” Lopez-Cantera said in the video.

For now, Lopez-Cantera’s chief rival is U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, a younger tea-party darling from Ponte Vedra Beach, near Daytona, with a compelling personal story who put Lopez-Cantera on notice Tuesday by reporting more than $2 million in the bank for his campaign. DeSantis has secured the backing of numerous donors to Lopez-Cantera’s boss, Gov. Rick Scott, who has said he’ll stay out of the GOP primary.

A potential North Florida challenger, U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller of Chumuckla, which is in the Panhandle, could split some of DeSantis’ conservative base if he runs. Likewise, a candidacy from U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Tampa, who appears set to jump in the race after the Florida Supreme Court ordered a redrawing of his swing district, could attract more moderate voters that Lopez-Cantera has his eye on. A first-time candidate, defense contractor Todd Wilcox of Orlando, is also running.

“There will be a lot of people in this race who promise a lot of things, but my conservative record in Florida is more than a promise,” Lopez-Cantera said in the video, promoting Tallahassee achievements. “It shows that I’ll fight and win for you even when the odds are long and the fights are hard.”

Rubio has said he will not run for re-election even if he drops out of the GOP presidential primary before he has to qualify for the 2016 ballot.

Because he holds a state office that is not on the 2016 ballot, Lopez-Cantera does not have to resign as lieutenant governor to seek the federal U.S. Senate seat. Scott has been asked if Lopez-Cantera should leave office anyway to avoid charges of campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime, but the governor has declined to answer, saying he leaves the decision to his No. 2 executive. Lopez-Cantera has made no indication that he plans to resign; in fact, part of his political calculus may be that he should run for Senate precisely because he’s still guaranteed his current job if his bid is not successful.

As his Senate run became more and more apparent, Lopez-Cantera’s critics — both Democrats and Republicans — have pointed out that he has hardly had a busy schedule as lieutenant governor. Daily agendas publicly circulated by his office have shown a light schedule for a job often derided as nothing more than a ceremonial position — that nevertheless draws a $125,000 salary.

Lopez-Cantera will have to defend Scott’s record, the good and the bad, on the campaign stump. Scott hand-picked him as his deputy 18 months ago, plucking Lopez-Cantera out of the elected Miami-Dade property appraiser’s post that he had held for only a year. Bilingual and far more comfortable in the political realm than the governor, Lopez-Cantera proved an effective campaigner, particularly to Hispanic voters. He also served as Scott’s messenger to state lawmakers, leaning on his relationships as former House majority leader, though that didn’t do much to prevent a stalemate in this year’s session.

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 9:08 AM with the headline "Carlos Lopez-Cantera says he’s running for Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat in Florida."