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Marco Rubio Gives Final Push In Northern Nevada

Several GOP candidates have been swinging through Reno ahead of the caucus, including Marco Rubio who spoke at the Peppermill Monday.

Reno Public Radio's Michelle Billman was there and has the story.

More than a thousand people were registered to attend and the casino ballroom was packed. Some of the voters I spoke to, including Mark Daly, were heading to several local GOP rallies to make up their minds for tonight's caucus. For Daly, it hinges on support for veterans.

As a Coast Guard veteran, Reno resident Mark Daly attended the Marco Rubio rally on Feb. 22, 2016 to scope out the candidate's plans to ramp up support for veterans.

"When you get out, you have to find your job, you're on your own," Daly said. "The VA benefits, going through them, it's like you need a special background just to figure everything out. A lot of veterans are left to just fend for themselves. It's been a very difficult transition. October 6th was my last day."

Rubio spoke to that concern directly, saying that the VA needs to be cleaned up.

"We act like we're doing the veterans a favor," Rubio said. "These are their benefits. We owe them; they don't us."

The Florida senator also said that he wants to see much of Nevada's public lands taken out of federal control, and, more than once, he reminded the crowd of his immigrant and working class roots, with his parents coming to the U.S. from Cuba and working their way out of poverty.

"They wanted all the doors that had been closed for them to be open for us, all the chances they never had for us to have," Rubio explained. "And they were able to achieve it working as a bartender and a maid. My mom was also a stock clerk at K-Mart. And working those jobs, they were able to provide us a better future.

25-year-old Reno resident Lindsey Carraher says she'll be caucusing for Rubio, partly because of his approach to immigration reform.

Lindsey Carraher says she'll caucus for Marco Rubio because of what she describes as his ability to work effectively with Democrats in Congress.

"If you want something to get done, there's this word called 'compromise,'--crazy--but as an intellectual, you have to be able to compromise with somebody. Marco Rubio understands that," she said. "We can get a better immigration policy, we just have to take the first steps to getting the other side to see that as well."

Rubio came in ten percentage points behind Donald Trump in South Carolina's Republican primary over the weekend, and Cruz trailed Rubio by a slight margin.

Michelle Billman is a former news director at KUNR Public Radio.
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