Marco Rubio’s Biggest Fan

In the foyer outside Norman Braman’s office, above a campus of luxury auto showrooms in downtown Miami where he sells Bugattis, Benzes, and BMWs, there’s an impressive GOP power wall—of a certain era. There’s a photo of Braman sprawled on a couch in the White House, opposite Gerald Ford. There’s Jack Kemp, Henry Kissinger. Two shots of Braman shaking hands with Reagan, both inscribed, “To Norman Braman, with best wishes, Ronald Reagan.”

It’s not because the 83-year-old auto magnate has retreated from politics that the people on his wall are mostly in their 90s or deceased. In Miami, where until recently Braman was suing the city to block construction of a 1,000-foot-tall entertainment complex that looks like a giant toenail clipper, he remains a formidable tormentor and occasional ally of local politicians. But nationally, he said, nobody’s been worth taking pictures with.