Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has secured the backing of megadonor Frank VanderSloot in his race for the GOP presidential nomination.
VanderSloot backed eventual nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 race.
"We started out by saying we needed to answer these two questions: Who would be the best president? And number two, who can get elected?"
VanderSloot told The Washington Post. "It ended up being the same person."
The Idaho businessman told the Post he also has given to two other candidates this election cycle: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Fiorina, he said, was his second choice.
Walker has since dropped out of the race.
VanderSloot said he had considered donating to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but that Bush "was losing steam, and the air's out of his balloon."
In an interview with CNN, VanderSloot said he doesn't think Rubio's lack of national political experience — the 44-year-old is a freshman U.S. senator — will hurt him.
"That is a valid question to ask, and yet we have a current president that was a freshman senator and ... we've seen that a freshman senator can get a lot of stuff done," VanderSloot said. "It happens, in my opinion, to be all of the wrong stuff, but ... I believe that Obama has demonstrated that a young senator can get a lot of stuff done."
VanderSloot said in a letter announcing his move that he is going "all out" for Rubio and in addition to his own donation will be acting as a bundler for others.
He called two popular candidates, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and businessman Donald Trump unelectable and said Trump "would make a particularly poor president."
Rubio's communications director Alex Conant tweeted the campaign was "thrilled" to have VanderSloot on board.
He is the latest major donor to sign on to Rubio's campaign, after billionaire Paul Singer and hedge fund manager Cliff Asness.
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