Tampa landlord cuts ties with Marco Rubio due to protests

A Tampa landlord is kicking Sen. Marco Rubio’s office to the curb to join the hundreds of protestors who have been camping out in the office park.

America’s Capital Partners, which owns the nine-story office building at 5201 Kennedy Boulevard, notified Rubio’s office at the beginning of February that it would not renew its lease, which had been on a month-to-month basis since the lease expired in December, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Rubio’s staff will have to leave by Friday, and has not yet secured a new location.

Rallies became too disruptive for other tenants of the Bridgeport Center, America’s Capital Partners President Jude Williams told the newspaper. Rubio, who lives in West Miami, has reportedly been dodging town hall meetings in Florida. Last week in Tampa, event organizers brought a life-sized cutout of Rubio to a town hall meeting in anticipation of his absence.

“A professional office building is not a place for that,” Williams said about the rallies at the Bridgeport Center. “I understand their cause, but at the end of the day it was a security concern for us.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. senator said that they are actively looking for new office space, and provided a phone number for constituents.  [Tampa Bay Times] – Katherine Kallergis