Marco Rubio rules out vice president, Florida governor run

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who recently gave up his bid for Republican presidential nomination, said he is not interested in being a vice president or immediately pursuing another elected office.

Rubio, answering questions on Capitol Hill days after departing the Republican primary race, said he has no plans to return to the race in the event of a contested Republican convention in July.

"I'm not going to be vice president, I'm not running for governor of Florida, I'm going to finish out my term in the Senate over the next 10 months," he said. "We're going to work really hard here and we have some things we want to achieve. And then I'll be a private citizen."

Rubio told reporters he is still deciding if he will endorse a candidate should noted front-runner Donald Trump will not secure enough delegates to cinch the nomination.

"There's still an open question about whether he gets to 1,237 [delegates], and we'll see as it plays out," Rubio said. "I don't think that's the ideal outcome for the party. I think in an ideal world you have a nominee, people coalesce around the nominee, and it gives you a stronger position in the general election. I don't believe Trump will ever be able to do that."

Criticized during his campaign for missing Senate votes while he ran for the nomination, Rubio spent his first full day back on the Senate floor Thursday attending the Foreign Relations Committee hearing on nuclear arms and an Intelligence committee briefing on potential threats from space. He received a standing ovation outside his Capitol Hill office when he arrived in the morning.

"At the end of the day, there was a 17-person field and I was one of the last four standing," he said. "Every major political figure in the Republican Party at the national level ran for president, so I'm so proud of how far we got. It just wasn't far enough."