Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has now reportedly indicated that he intends to decide on the replacement for Sen. Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate by early January.
He has already initiated the process of evaluating a number of potential candidates.
Last week, President-elect Donald Trump made an official announcement that he would nominate Rubio, a prominent Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees and a three-term senator from Florida, to serve as secretary of state in his upcoming administration.
“Senator Marco Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as Secretary of State when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th, creating a vacancy roughly two months from today,” DeSantis wrote.
DeSantis then added that “we have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting. More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks, with a selection likely made by the beginning of January.”
The statement from Florida’s two-term conservative Republican governor is in response to the recommendation of several prominent Trump loyalists that DeSantis appoint Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee co-chair and the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, to replace Rubio for the next two years.
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