Former Romney adviser joins Rubio's campaign for U.S. presidency

[September 15, 2015]  By Steve Holland
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lanhee Chen, who was 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's chief policy adviser, said on Monday that he has joined the campaign of Republican candidate Marco Rubio as an adviser.

Chen, 37, has been sought after by a number of Republican presidential campaigns this year for his policy experience.

Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, a position he will retain while also assisting Rubio.

Chen was a key adviser for Romney during the former Massachusetts governor's march to the 2012 nomination and during the general election campaign, which he lost to President Barack Obama.

He told Reuters he decided to help Rubio because of the Florida senator's fluency in a number of public policy issues and challenges facing the United States.

Rubio is one of 16 Republicans seeking the party's presidential nomination in the November 2016 election, a field currently led by New York businessman Donald Trump.

Romney briefly pondered a 2016 run early this year but decided against it, saying he believes "one of our next generation of Republican leaders" may emerge as better positioned to defeat the Democratic nominee.

For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, “Tales from the Trail” (http://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/).

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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