Continuing its political series on Republican scandals that aren’t actually scandals, The New York Times today published a piece on Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s entirely ordinary financial debts and struggles, claiming that his less-than-perfect record of financial management should concern voters.

Titled “Struggles With Finances Track Marc Rubio’s Career,” the article by Steve Eder and Michael Barbaro begins by stating that Rubio has for years “struggled under the weight of student debt, mortgages and an extra loan against the value of his home totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars”—figures that put him in the company of millions of Americans.

After Rubio received $800,000 for a book deal in 2012, the Times notes that he “splurged on an extravagant purchase: $80,000 for a luxury speedboat,” despite stating in a speech that he planned to use the funds to pay off his law school loans. The article fails to mention that his law school loans totaled less than $150,000 at the time and that the $80,000 spent on the boat was a mere 10% of his book earnings.

The article also details how Rubio took a part-time teaching position at Florida International University to earn some extra cash, quoting a University vice president who claims “he needed the money.”

One of the few legitimate points of concern brought up by the article is Rubio’s apparent use of a state Republican Party credit card to pay for paving stones bought for his home and for “travel to a family reunion.”

On these points, the Times reports:

Rubio blamed a travel agent for the reunion charge and said that he had pulled out the wrong credit card to pay for the pavers. “I wish that none of them had ever been charged,” he wrote in his book. “He reimbursed the state party for each expense, he said.

 It is not until seventeen paragraphs in that the authors of the article mention that “The Rubios have taken steps to stabilize their finances in recent years” and that “Since 2012, they have started college savings accounts for his four children, put away at least $150,000, given $60,000 to charity, and refinanced the mortgage on their primary home to lower the monthly payments.”

The purported expose of  Rubio’s financial mismanagement follows another Times piece last week which focused on the fact that Rubio accumulated the vast total of four traffic tickets over the previous eighteen years—clearly a newsworthy political impediment.

The Rubio camp hit back with a statement posted on the candidate’s website calling the Times piece on Rubio’s finances “just the latest in their continued hits against Marco and his family.”

The statement continues:

First The New York Times attacked Marco over traffic tickets, and now they think he doesn’t have enough money. Of course if he was worth millions, The Times would then attack him for being too rich, like they did to Mitt Romney.

What The Times misses is that getting rich is not what has driven Senator Rubio’s financial decisions. His goal at this stage in his life is to provide his four children with a good home, a quality education, and a safe and happy upbringing. 

Other writers and media outlets are also calling out the Times for its attempts to create scandal where none exists.

Well-known liberal writer Matthew Yglesias commented on twitter that “The NYT has taken to publishing some awfully odd oppo about Marco Rubio.”

William Leitch for Bloomburg Politics queried, “Did the New York Times Just Make Marco Rubio a Lot More Relatable?” Leitch writes:

If the Times wanted to make Rubio look relatable to the average American—more like them than his potential opponents—they couldn’t have come up with much better than “show he has had financial problems.” 

The Daily Caller’s Alex Griswold called the latest Times piece on Rubio’s finances “substantially more newsworthy than the fact that he racked up four traffic tickets in two decades — but not by much.”

Griswold adds:

don’t be fooled; the Rubio campaign is thrilled. The Times has simultaneously united conservatives in defense of the Florida Republican and demonstrated that, despite having no less than five reporters actively trying to discredit his campaign, the best arguments against Rubio really are unbelievably lame.