Rubio urged to bow out of White House race

The staff of The World and Everything in It has profiled 22 possible candidates for president in 2016 its “White House Wednesday” series. Now they take a look at who’s ahead and who’s making moves as the big campaign gets closer.

Choosing a seat. Pressure is beginning to mount on Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., not to run for president. Republicans are hoping to hold onto their new Senate majority beyond the next two years. Rubio is up for reelection in 2016, when the GOP will have to defend more than twice as many Senate seats as the Democrats will. Rubio’s departure would throw the Florida Senate race wide open. By Florida law, Rubio cannot run for Senate reelection and the presidency at the same time. And though some have suggested changing that law, Rubio told ABC News last year he would choose one or the other. He has a few more months to make his decision. The filing deadline for Senate candidates in Florida is in May.

Ramping up. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson recently hired conservative marketing guru Mike Murray to serve as a senior adviser for a possible presidential campaign, which looks more likely each day. And real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump says he’s leaning toward a run for president. On a scale of 1 to 10, he told Fox News last week the likelihood of a Trump 2016 campaign is “much more than five.”

Confounding foundation. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton may be laying low these days, but that doesn’t mean she’s absent from the headlines. She is taking heat for foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, her family charity. When she became secretary of state in 2009, at the administration’s request, she agreed to suspend all foreign donations to the organization. But the ban was lifted when she left office, and over the past couple of years, the Clinton Foundation has accepted many millions of dollars from foreign entities. Some foreign governments and corporations are undoubtedly trying to buy favor here, knowing Clinton might be in the White House soon. The New York Times recently called on Clinton to reinstitute the ban on foreign donations to the foundation. In another controversy, Clinton is taking fire for not putting her money where her mouth is. In April, Clinton tweeted that 20 years ago women earned 72 cents for every dollar men earned. She then said it’s only 77 cents now, adding that there’s still work to do. But a Washington Free Beacon report this week claims that when she was New York senator, Clinton paid female employees 72 cents for every dollar she paid men.

Presidential power rankings. The presidential power rankings are a weekly snapshot of where things stand in the Republican primary race right now. If caucus-goers and voters began heading to the polls today, how would the candidates stack up? There’s almost no daylight between the top two people on the list this week. There was basically a statistical tie between Walker at No. 2 and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who held onto the top spot by the narrowest of margins. Walker actually edged ahead of Bush in the polls this week, but not by much. It looks like Bush is raising a lot more money right now, which makes up for the slight deficit in the polls.

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