MIAMI — When the rest of the country mocked Marco Rubio for his designer black leather boots, the ones that make him look a few inches taller, people in Rubio's hometown shrugged.

Who around here doesn't spend a little money — OK a lot — to enhance this or that?

And news stories about his cocaine-dealing brother-in-law? Sure, there were ethical questions about Rubio helping him get a real estate license upon his release from prison in 2002, when Rubio was part of the leadership of the state Legislature.

But the cocaine part of the story wasn't so shocking. The brother-in-law was convicted back in the high-rolling 1980s. In Miami, if it wasn't a relative dealing coke, it was a neighbor, or a high school classmate.

As the first-term Florida senator's bid for the Republican presidential nomination enters what may be its twilight phase if he doesn't win his home state's primary on Tuesday, many in South Florida have been struck by how his traits, faults and political sympathies have been viewed on the national stage.

Things that grab attention on a national stage are often viewed differently in Miami, which takes pride in its bizarre crimes and carnivallike political culture.

“Miami's very forgiving of poor decision-making,” said Justin Wales, a local attorney and liberal political activist. “We built the city around it.”

Nearly all of the allegations thrown at Rubio — accusations of house-flipping, using the Republican Party credit card for lavish vacations, keeping close ties to a controversial politician — have been covered extensively by the local media. And residents have certainly raised questions and taken notice.

But Rubio's alleged foibles, some of which he denies and others which he says are overblown, don't compare with the stuff that becomes lore around here — the U.S. attorney who resigned after being accused of biting a stripper in the 1990s; the onetime county commissioner who fled to Australia a few years later to avoid questions about a prostitute, a crack den and his stolen Mercedes; the former city official under investigation for corruption who shot himself in the Miami Herald's lobby.

Even the ecology here is a little different.

“You can wake up on any given morning and find an alligator in your swimming pool,” said Jose Dante Parra, a Miami native. “It desensitizes us a little bit.

“The flip side of that is that other places might be so boring,” he added. “Just one story like the ones we have here in Miami would be remembered for a long time” if it happened in most other cities.

Politicians depend on those short memories, the fact that so many people here are tourists or move in or out from elsewhere.

Another criticism Rubio has weathered on the campaign, that he has altered his talking points when he speaks with Spanish-language media, is a well-worn tactic here.

Alex Villalobos, a Republican former majority leader in the Florida Senate who has not endorsed anyone in the presidential race, said South Florida lawmakers routinely leave the House or Senate floor midway through a debate to call the Spanish-language radio station back home to claim credit for a bill they never passed or money that someone else secured.

“Within minutes, what I saw before my very eyes morphed into something else that never happened,” said Villalobos, now a lawyer-lobbyist. “The person who actually did it is still on the floor, and you're on the phone to take credit for it. You're on the phone to live radio.”

This city has long been populated by people who have come from all corners — New Yorkers, Latin Americans of all nationalities, Haitians, Jamaicans — to write their own narrative and create their own myths. Rubio did that, too, claiming for years that his parents were Cuban exiles fleeing Fidel Castro's regime, when in fact they came as immigrants before Castro took power.

Michael Colon, 33, forgave that transgression as well.

“People migrate for different reasons,” Colon said at his kiosk at Dolphin Mall.

Joe Cardona, who was born in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, said the city's cultural mix gives residents their own cultural identity so that he identifies more as a Miamian than as a Cuban American.

“We all grew up in this quirky place,” Cardona said. “We're all a little Latino down here, and we're all a little Jewish down here, and we're all a little Haitian. It's inevitable.”

nbierman@tribpub.com