Rubio re-elected to second Senate term in Florida | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Nine months ago, Marco Rubio wanted to be president. On Tuesday night, the Republican senator from Florida was re-elected to the U.S. Senate

The Associated Press claimed the victory for Rubio shortly after 8 p.m. EST.

After dropping out of the presidential race once he’d lost his home state to Donald Trump in the March 15 Florida primary, Rubio stated that he would not seek re-election to the Senate.

But about three months later, he changed his mind about returning to private life and declared two days before the deadline that he was back in the race to keep his Senate seat.

“I think that the point that really drove me to change my mind is that as we enter this kind of new chapter in our history here is, there’s another role the Senate plays that I think can be really important in the years to come,” he said at the time.

When it comes to the presidential election, the Florida senator hasn’t been too thrilled about either candidate. While he has backed Trump, Rubio did not attend the Republican National Convention to support him, and he said the nominee is still unqualified to be president, according to The Miami Herald.

But he added that his ballot would still be cast for Trump.

“No matter who’s elected president, there’s reason to worry,” he told the Herald. “If it’s Hillary Clinton, you know we’re going to have four more years of the same failed economic policies, four more years of the same failed foreign policy. The prospect of a Trump presidency is also worrisome to me in many ways.”