Florida Senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio is in Golden Valley tonight (7pm) at a campaign rally for Republican candidate for governor Jeff Johnson. It’s an interesting political juxtaposition: In 2016 the Republican Party establishment, concerned about increasing momentum in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, brought forward Rubio as an alternative. Johnson was the Minnesota chair of Rubio’s campaign, and in Republicans’ precinct caucus straw poll early in 2016, Rubio took the top spot by a significant margin: 36 percent, to rival Ted Cruz’s 29 percent and Donald Trump’s 21 percent. But Minnesota was the only state where Rubio won in the precinct caucuses, and from that point on, Trump’s campaign gained steam, right through the November election.