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Democracy Dies in Darkness

Former congressman David Rivera, who is accused of secretly lobbying for Venezuela, climbed the ranks of Miami politics alongside Marco Rubio.

March 24, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDT1 minute ago

Left: David Rivera in Miami in 2022. Right: Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill in 2025. (Composite Image/Photos by Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

MIAMI — Marco Rubio and David Rivera charted a rise in this city’s famously scrappy politics together.

Both sons of Cuban immigrants, they befriended each other as campaign volunteers in the 1990s and climbed the ranks of local politics side-by-side. As young state legislators, they bought a house together near the capital in Tallahassee, where they orchestrated Rubio’s rise to Florida House Speaker and then launched winning bids to Congress.