WASHINGTON & SANTA FE, NM (By Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle) January 31, 2012 — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is at the top of every pundit's short list to be the Republican vice presidential nominee, in the belief having a Hispanic in the second spot on the ticket will attract Hispanic voters who have been fleeing the GOP in recent years.

But at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference in Miami, the Berkeley organization Presente Action is launching a national anti-Rubio campaign during his big moment in the national spotlight, days before Tuesday's critical Florida primary.

Their assertion, backed by recent surveys, is Rubio's positions on several key issues, immigration in particular, are far from the mainstream of the Hispanic electorate.

So Presente, a 3-year-old, 250,000-member online hub that aims to be "the Hispanic MoveOn.org" is aiming its campaign at the senator who is a Tea Party darling. The campaign's name: "No somos Rubios." ("We are not Rubios.")

"Rubio has to decide," said Presente Action co-founder and strategist Roberto Lovato, "if he's a Hispanic or a Tea Partino."

Out of step

Rubio opposes a pathway to citizenship as part of comprehensive immigration reform and does not support the Dream Act - legislation that calls for undocumented students who were brought to the United States as minors and who have lived here for at least five years to be given a path to legal residency if they graduate from U.S. high schools and meet a variety of legal criteria. Many polls show Latinos support both a pathway to citizenship and the Dream Act.

"Surprisingly, he has taken a hard-line position even on issues that have bipartisan support," like the Dream Act, said Aarti Kohli, who is the director of immigration policy at the Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the UC Berkeley Law School.

"It's naive on the part of Republicans to put a Hispanic on the ticket just because he has a Hispanic surname," said Louis Desipio, a professor of political science and Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Irvine. "He has not taken a position on anything in the Senate that can connect with Latinos."

Besides, Desipio said, studies show there is little evidence Hispanic voters would choose a candidate in a high-level race just because he or she is Hispanic.

They come courting

Nevertheless, while Presente Action-mobilized activists are expected to be there to greet Rubio when he speaks at the conference today with GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the two Republicans at the top of the polls in Florida are courting the 40-year-old senator, who was elected in 2010. Rubio said he will not endorse a candidate in the race.

The deference may be somewhat outsized, analysts said, given Rubio does not have much of a national profile outside of Florida. A Pew Hispanic Center study last month found 54 percent of registered Hispanic voters had never heard of Rubio and 40 percent of Hispanic Republicans said they didn't know him.

Yet Rubio's influence over both Romney and Gingrich is palpable. On Wednesday, Rubio said Gingrich should pull a TV ad running in Florida that described Romney as "anti-immigrant." It wasn't accurate, Rubio said. Both Romney and Rubio oppose the Dream Act and a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants.

Gingrich pulled the ad "out of respect" for Rubio, he said.

"Whoever wins this nomination is going to have to come back to Florida in the fall and win again," Rubio told CBS on Thursday. "I want to make sure we don't have candidates out there saying things we have to come back later on and defend and clean up in the fall when they're in Florida."

Immigration issue

"Obviously, immigration is a very important issue," Rubio told CBS. But "for the vast majority of the days of the year, you don't wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking about that.

"What's on people's minds is what's on your mind and my mind: How am I going to provide for my family? How am I going to give my kids the chance to do all the things I myself could not do," Rubio said.

Indeed, a survey this month from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center found immigration ranked sixth when voters were asked what issue was "extremely important." The top issue was jobs, described as "extremely important" by 50 percent of those polled; 33 percent described immigration that way.

Nevertheless, Favianna Rodriguez, a co-founder of Presente Action, said the GOP's courting of Rubio is a "symbol the way Hispanic voters are courted is antiquated. And we are going to point that out."