WEST MIAMI, Fla. — One summer evening in 2009, Marco Rubio and some of his closest friends huddled in the backyard of his Miami home, in a modest neighborhood with store signs written in Spanish.

Pizza, soft drinks, and cigars were on the menu. So was the potential demise of his political career.

Rubio had launched an upstart campaign for the US Senate, but was trailing far behind the much better known and popular governor, Charlie Crist. Rubio wondered aloud whether he should drop out of that 2010 race, and some in the gathering were leaning that way, too.

His wife, Jeanette, was having none of it.

“The final straw was probably his wife saying basically, ‘Stop pussyfooting around. Let’s get this thing done. Let’s go after the guy,’?’’ said Steve Bovo, a former colleague from the state Legislature.

“Going after the guy’’ meant adopting a much stronger Tea Party sensibility, not an easy task for Rubio, whose charisma and political and rhetorical skills had carried him to one of the state’s key elected roles, holder of the House speaker’s gavel in Tallahassee.

Rubio would relentlessly paint Crist as a tool of the establishment, a big-spending Republican who embraced — literally — President Obama. And amid the economic wreckage of Florida’s foreclosure crisis and conservative anger at Obama, the strategy worked.

In just nine months, Rubio went from 46 points down in the polls to a narrow lead over Crist, stunning the party establishment from Washington to Tallahassee. His rise was so potent and swift, Crist abandoned the party altogether, and mounted a failed bid as an independent.

Now Rubio, in his bid for president, is desperate for another stirring comeback, and it is spurring another transformation. The man who six years ago was branded “the first senator from the Tea Party’’ is piling up Washington endorsements and being showered with inside-the-Beltway cash as the GOP establishment’s last, best chance to derail Donald Trump’s insurgent campaign to seize the presidential nomination.

He is also, once again, “going after the guy’’ — this time Trump — with sudden ferocity and mocking humor.

As it was in 2010, the situation is desperate for Rubio, a candidate who, remarkably, has never lost an election. Trying to unite the fractious Republican Party may be impossible, and it may be too late — with Super Tuesday just two days away, another round of winner-take-all primary states looming in two weeks, and Trump leading in polls almost everywhere.

Rubio has yet to win a primary contest, and some are already counting him out. For Rubio, and his close-knit team of advisers — many of whom also guided him in 2010 — it all feels familiar.

“All of the same arguments made against him back then have been made against us this time. It’s eerily similar,’’ said Todd Harris, who was a senior adviser to Rubio’s 2010 bid and is doing the same for his 2016 presidential campaign.

“We had our fair share of setbacks back then that he had to power through. Just like this cycle,’’ he added. “And we all know how that one ended.’’

But this time, Rubio doesn’t have seven months, as he did against Crist. If Trump sweeps the Super Tuesday elections this week, he may not even have seven days.

Using ‘the hug’

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has always been something of an underdog, from his first race for city commissioner in West Miami as a 26-year-old recent law school graduate, to his eight years in the Florida Legislature.

When the Florida Senate seat opened up, it set off a scramble among the state’s political elite. Once former governor Jeb Bush opted against a run, the opportunity appeared more enticing to Rubio.

Still, there was little reason to think Crist, the sitting governor, could be beaten. He was enormously popular, with an approval rating of 70 percent. He had won four statewide elections in 10 years. Rubio had never been on a statewide ballot. He had never been in a debate.

But Crist’s strengths faded sharply, on one day, with one image.

Newly inaugurated Obama had just signed the federal stimulus package designed to pull the nation out of the economic crisis of 2008. Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the stimulus in Congress, and the president wanted to showcase bipartisanship. He traveled to Florida.

Crist happily hosted him on Feb. 10, 2009, just three weeks after Obama’s inauguration. The two men appeared together on a stage in Fort Myers. Crist introduced the president, and then hugged him close.

As the Tea Party catalyzed in coming months around hostility to the stimulus, Rubio realized he could use images of the embrace as a bludgeon. Within a few months, his advisers had put together a Web video that prominently featured “the hug.’’

Just after viewing the spot in May, Rubio wrote in his 2012 memoir, “An American Son,’’ he sent an e-mail to his consultants.

“Three things happened. 1. I got chills. 2. My wife and children painted themselves up in blue face like Braveheart. 3. I went to the closet and got out my costume from Gladiator and I could hear the crowd chant: ‘Maximus! Maximus!’?’’

“Let’s go kill the emperor!’’ he concluded. “I love it.’’

Waiting for the cavalry

The GOP establishment didn’t, at the outset, have the time of day for Marco Rubio, Senate candidate.

A week after formally launching his campaign in May 2009 — first with an interview on the Spanish language news network Univision, then with a Web video the next day — Rubio flew to Washington. He was scheduled to meet with Senator John Cornyn, who was head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But Crist had just entered the race. Within minutes, Cornyn announced his influential committee would be endorsing Crist. Rubio kept the meeting with Cornyn, and as he left the senator’s office, his phone rang: It was one of his campaign consultants.

Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican and conservative firebrand who clashed with GOP leadership, wanted to meet with Rubio. DeMint was an emerging leader in the Tea Party movement, and eager to help like-minded candidates.

DeMint did not immediately endorse. And as Rubio returned to Florida, he was demoralized.

He had raised a paltry $340,000 for his campaign. Crist raised that in just four days — bringing in a total record-breaking $4.3 million during the first three months. Rubio considered dropping out and even wrote a draft speech apologizing to his supporters.

“Our ideas are strong,’’ he considered saying, “but our fund-raising hasn’t been.’’

But some of Rubio’s advisers urged him to push on just a little longer. If they could get some more national attention, capture the conservative anger that was building across the country, they could begin to build.

“My take was: If you have the Florida establishment and the Washington establishment aligned against you, you need the cavalry to come,’’ said Pat Shortridge, one of Rubio’s top strategists in the campaign. “Once it was clear that this guy was going to work nonstop and he wasn’t going anywhere, the cavalry came.’’

The cavalry, in some ways, meant DeMint, who endorsed Rubio in June and immediately boosted Rubio’s image among national conservatives.

Starting in the fall, DeMint's political fund-raising committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund, donated nearly $400,000 to Rubio and ran about $160,000 in ads. Rubio landed on the cover of the National Review with the headline, “Yes He Can.’’

Something was happening in Florida: a battle, some said, for the soul of the Republican Party.

“We were finding a very receptive audience in [the Tea Party],’’ Harris said. “And right at the time that their power and influence was just starting to emerge. And they represented all the same things that Marco was talking about.

“It was really one of those things where his message and the time were perfectly in synch.’’

Slogging through Florida

At about the same time that Scott Brown was driving his truck through Massachusetts, appealing to Tea Party groups in an unlikely campaign, Rubio was doing the same thing in Florida.

Rubio would get in his F-150 truck and drive it around Florida. One of his aides, Anthony Bustamante, would urge Rubio to call donors. Rubio would resist, getting worn down by the constant rejection.

One morning, Bustamante drove up to Rubio’s home to pick him up. Rubio had just found out that influential Florida Republican Al Cardenas, a father figure who had been a political mentor, had just endorsed Crist.

“You could see it in his face,’’ Bustamante said. “That morning when I picked up him, you could see the disappointment.’’

Rubio kept slogging to events across the state. Discontented Republicans were looking for an alternative at the same time as Rubio was willing to drive to any gathering that included more than five people.

“I am proud to stand with you,’’ he told Tea Party members rallying in Orlando, “the increasingly not-so-silent majority of Americans who want the country they love and adore back, who once again want to live in a land where people, not government, determines the course of their lives.’’

But even while Rubio appealed to the Tea Party movement, he tried to straddle the line, to broaden his appeal to mainstream Republicans.

“He respected the movement, he reached out to the movement, he coveted the support of the movement,’’ said Tom Tillison, cofounder of the Central Florida Tea Party Council. “But . . . he didn’t get completely lost in the sense of being branded as a Tea Party politician.’’

In a year that saw the sudden rise and flameout of numerous Tea Party-backed candidates — Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware — Rubio was one of the few with enough mainstream credibility to win a general election.

“Rubio is kind of a Tea Partier,’’ Moreno said. “He’s kind of in between the Tea Party and the establishment. He’s not comfortable with either label.’’

At the end of the day, Bustamante and Rubio would stop at a fast-food joint, McDonald’s or Taco Bell. Then Rubio would recline his seat, close his eyes, and sleep until they reached Miami as Bustamante turned the XM station to comedy to keep his mind awake.

It was, at times, a lonely quest. But that began to change.

“My gauging process was the day that someone recognizes Marco outside the restaurant or the airport we made it,’’ Bustamante said. “In early 2010 we were outside the airport in Miami. Someone said, ‘You’re Marco Rubio! Can I get a picture.’ That’s when I knew. I said, ‘We made it.’?’’

‘Eyes wide open’

By January 2010, about six months after the meeting in Rubio’s backyard where he was close to dropping out, the tide had turned. He had been down by more than 30 points. Now polls showed he was in the lead.

Crist’s campaign was frustrated that all of its attacks on Rubio seemed to be brushed aside.

“He was like Teflon,’’ said one former Crist aide. “I don’t think anyone has landed anything on him. Certainly we weren’t about to, despite efforts to say he’s a lobbyist who used politics to enrich himself, and he’s unprepared for the job he’s seeking.’’

“He is very smooth. And he’s good,’’ the former aide added. “He’s agile. He is able to hit back with a harder personal attack.’’

With the writing on the wall, Crist dropped out of the Republican primary, opting instead to mount an independent bid. For a time, Crist’s more moderate credentials helped him appeal to a broader electorate. But the Democrats had a strong nominee, US Representative Kendrick Meek, who split up the vote.

It didn’t take long before Rubio was again in the lead. By Election Day, it was a foregone conclusion.

That night, Rubio’s supporters gathered in a hotel ballroom. Jeb Bush, introducing Rubio, said he was so happy he could cry.

“In a few short days, I will have the extraordinary privilege and honor of joining the United States Senate,’’ Rubio said. “But I do so with my eyes wide open. I understand that Washington is a place where we’ve sent people before, and they don’t come back the same way we sent them. It is a place that literally changes people, and within a short period of time, they forgot why they even ran.’’

?In S.C., a big win for Clinton. A8. ??In Mass., Trump tops GOP poll. B1.

Matt Viser can be reached at matt.viser@globe.com.