Norman Braman: Billionaire backer of Marco Rubio who is out to stop Jeb Bush's bid for Republican presidential nomination at any cost

David Usborne meets one of the new generation of super-wealthy money men whose influence over US elections has grown so large

Norman Braman gives a thumbs-up to Rubio as he unveils his Republican presidential nomination (Getty)

One floor above his shiny BMW showroom in Miami, Norman Braman won’t be pressed on just how much money he has already given to the nascent presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio or how much he expects to give going forward. “It will be substantial,” he quips laconically.

Sitting in an office decorated with fraying artefacts of the Revolutionary War, Braman, 82, is less coy about why he is backing Senator Rubio over a certain other Floridian who is set soon also to get into the race, former Governor Jeb Bush. Just as America’s rejection of a British king stirs his imagination so he eyes Bush today with impatience verging on disdain. He is a Republican. And he is a republican.

“I don’t believe in dynasties, I don’t believe in coronations, that is not how it works in this country,” he says in an interview with The Independent that offers a rare glimpse into the ambitions of one of the new generation of super-wealthy money-men whose influence over US elections has grown so large. In the same breath he asserts that his man, Marco Rubio, represents precisely how things should work.

A scion of no one, Rubio, 43, is a first-generation American, son of a father and mother who fled from communist Cuba to the United States, where, working as a barman and a maid, they raised a family.

Amid all the early cacophony of the contest for the Republican nomination – the field may grow to as many as 20 – the rivalry between onetime friends and political soulmates Messrs Bush and Rubio stands apart as a startling story broadly described as ungrateful protégé turning on betrayed mentor. But as Florida Republicans (and donors) try to decide which of the two men they should back – both call the Miami area home – they are also paying close attention to Braman; and his wallet.

Senator Marco Rubio in South Carolina (AP)

From the moment Bush acknowledged his interest in running for president it was clear he’d be a fund-raising machine. Indeed, he hasn’t declared formally yet, because when he does he will have to stop tapping donors for the Political Action Committee that will support his candidacy, Right to Rise. It was also clear that anyone planning to run against him would have to have their own serious sources of cash.

Enter stage right Norman Braman. Estimated to be worth nearly $2bn, he is no dabbler. Three years ago, he took umbrage when the then Miami mayor, Carlos Alvarez, tried to raise city taxes. He spearheaded – and bankrolled – a recall campaign that drummed him out of office.

“He [Braman] is a man of great resources and a man who speaks his convictions and puts his money where his mouth is,” said Raul Valdes-Fauli, a former mayor of Coral Gables, just south of Miami, and a friend, who supports Bush.

Braman – a collector of contemporary art (he is the founding chair of the Art Basel art fair in Miami), former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles American football team, and purveyor not just of the BMW marque in Florida and Colorado but also Bugatti, Bentley and Rolls-Royce – is already being likened to Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino tycoon who kept the candidacy of Newt Gingrich alive in 2012 by giving it millions. The difference, though, is no one else thought Gingrich would ever be president.

If shaping, rather than just studying, history is Braman’s game, he could just be on the right track again. Since declaring here in Miami, Rubio, who was speaker in the Florida legislature before running successfully for the Senate against long odds in 2010, has made a very strong start. In the latest RealClearPolitics.com poll of polls, he is trailing Bush among likely Republican hopefuls by a single point. A Wall Street Journal survey last week found three out of four likely Republican voters saying they can see themselves supporting him for president. No one else scored so well, including Governor Bush.

These, of course, are still very early days. The first televised debate between Republican hopefuls is not until August and the first votes in the primaries won’t be cast until early next year. But if some are surprised that Rubio is already running so strongly, not so Braman. Indeed, he tells the story of appearing in a video for Rubio marking the end of his term as speaker in 2009 and predicting on camera back then that the young state lawmaker would one day be America’s first Latino president.

“I have seen him develop into someone who I think would be a wonderful president of this country. I think he embodies what this nation is all about,” he averred. “He doesn’t just go around bashing [President] Obama, he talks about what he would do as president. He is the only candidate who has been totally and absolutely specific about what he will do.” That includes a tax plan that would slash rates for investors and businesses and give big credits for families with children.

Rival Jeb Bush (AP)

If the politics of Marco Rubio, who won his Senate seat five years ago with strong backing from conservatives in the Tea Party, seem to jibe with his patron’s – both are fierce defenders of Israel – it’s his youth and by-the-bootstraps story that moves Braman more. And it isn’t just the Bush brand that’s old, he said. “The Democrats would be better off giving the public a chance to vote for someone young – they have young leaders in the party – as I think Republicans should do. I think that is where the future is.

“The country has had enough of the Clintons and the Bushes.”

There is so much piquancy in the Bush-Rubio clash because of the history they share. As Governor until he left office in 2007, Bush strenuously backed the younger man’s ascent through the ranks of the legislature, including his run for the speakership. He later endorsed Rubio in 2010 for the Senate.

That Rubio is now seeking the party nomination against Bush is seen by some as crude treachery.

“Even more than mentor and student, Jeb set the rules of the game that Marco then played,” noted Keith Fitzgerald, a professor of politics at the New College of Florida who served in the Florida legislature as a Democrat when Rubio was speaker. “He made the space for a figure like Marco Rubio to come and operate. It is hard to imagine how, without Jeb Bush, someone like Rubio could have emerged.”

Valdes-Fauli, whose son is already employed by the Bush campaign, says he doesn’t know if the former governor had been shocked by Rubio’s decision to run against him. “I think he would rather not have Marco there. You are always upset when anyone runs against you, but particularly surprised? I suspect not.”

He dismissed the notion that Rubio had showed uncommon disloyalty. “Is that new in politics?” But he confessed he was perplexed by Braman’s backing of him.

Back at the BMW dealership a few blocks north up Biscayne Boulevard, Braman offered a part of the answer. He recalled the day in 2004 when he was knifed, politically speaking, by Jeb Bush when he vetoed a budget line from the legislature giving $2m to a cancer institute at the University of Miami that Braman and his wife, Irma, had just given $5m of their own money.

“I never understood why and I never received an explanation for it,” he said. “I would be less than honest with you if I didn’t tell you that it bothered me then. It doesn’t bother me now, but it bothered me then.”

The Bush-Rubio feud matters not just because for now they are leading the Republican pack. It matters also because Florida is the most important swing state in presidential elections. But first these men will collide head-on when Florida’s turn in the marathon of primary voting arrives. It seems likely that the one who stumbles then will thereafter never recover.

Braman, whose favourite possession is a rare original parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, will consider it his job to ensure that it is Jeb of the Bush monarchy who bites the dust on that day, not his man Rubio.