'Not going to be vice president,' Jeb Bush says before Ave Maria graduation speech

AVE MARIA — For just the second time, Ave Maria University on Saturday graduated a class of students who spent their entire four-year academic career at the campus carved out of tomato fields between Naples and Immokalee.

The featured commencement speaker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, had been there for the groundbreaking eight years ago, he told the gathering.

Just before Bush spoke, Ave Maria University President Jim Towey asked those in the group if they thought Bush should be president. Towey and Bush were greeted with a roar of approval.

Bush, who received an honorary law degree from Ave Maria, spoke to a gaggle of reporters before the commencement ceremony. Inevitably, the first question was on the vice presidency.

"Wow, no foreplay," he quipped. "I'm not going to be vice president. I'm an active supporter of governor Romney. I humbly suggest he seriously consider Marco Rubio."

The Cuban-American senator from Florida, Bush said, is the most eloquent speaker for Hispanics in this country. Bush said Romney should focus on a "proactive immigration policy that promotes legal immigration. We can't send a signal that we want to be the old white guy party."

En esta foto de archivo del 9 de febrero de 2012, el senador republicano por Florida Marco Rubio da un discurso en la Conferencia de Acción Política Conservadora en Washington. Rubio apoyó a Mitt Romney como candidato presidencial del Partido Republicano el miércoles 28 de marzo de 2012. (AP foto/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Florida will be key to the presidential election, Bush said, adding: "We're the purplest of all purple states. If the president wins Florida, Romney has to do a lot more elsewhere."

Bush then took to the microphone to address the graduates.

"I told my mother I was giving an important speech today, and asked her what I should speak about," Bush said. "She said, 'speak about 10 minutes.' So start your watches."

He may have gone over his self-allotted time by a few minutes, but the graduates, family and well-wishers ate it up. Bush spoke of the dignity of work and the strain on the modern family.

"The institution of marriage is collapsing," he said, noting that more than half of the parents in households today aren't married, and 41 percent of babies are born to unwed mothers.

Two graduates, at least, already had taken the marriage message to heart.

Karen Perez, of Naples, and Steven DiLauro, of Baltimore, just got married, they said outside the fieldhouse after the graduation ceremony.

"It was last-minute," she said. "We met in biology lab, second semester of freshman year."

Both plan to go on to graduate programs, with medical school in her future.

"We'll be taking out many loans," she said.

With 175 receiving degrees, including 37 graduate students and 138 undergraduates, this was the largest graduating class in the school's history. Candidates came from around the country and world, with graduates from Vietnam, Poland, Ireland, Nicaragua and Uzbekistan.