About him
Jeb Bush was born Feb. 11, 1953, in Midland, Texas.
Bush, the former governor of Florida, is the third in his family to seek the presidency, behind his brother and father, the nation’s two most recent Republican presidents. Bush lost his first campaign for governor in 1994, but won in 1998 and was re-elected in 2002.
Bush, the only Republican to serve two full terms as Florida governor, started in business and later co-founded a south Florida real estate company. He often says while meeting voters that he “signed the front side of a paycheck,” as a way of setting himself apart from rivals who lack private-sector management experience. The 62-year-old from Coral Gables, near Miami, moved to Florida after stints as a bank employee in Texas and bank manager in Venezuela. Before that, the second-oldest of four Bush sons earned a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
He and his wife, Columba, have three children.
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His stand (entering the race)
Jeb Bush effectively stepped into the Republican race for president on Thursday, June 4, finally taking his place — after months of hints and relentless fundraising — amid an unwieldy field of GOP candidates unlike any in recent memory.
The former Florida governor arrived with the rank of front-runner and the donors to match.
“It’s as wide-open a race as we’ve seen in a long time, ” said Republican strategist Kevin Madden, who described Bush as the “technical front-runner” in a field that, once Bush officially declared his bid, stood at 11 major candidates.
The confirmation from aides that Bush will indeed run is a defining moment for the GOP. The son of President George H.W. Bush and younger brother of President George W. Bush, he was considered a favorite of the Republican establishment, the experienced and well-connected party faithful who have showered the 62-year-old with money, staffing talent and encouragement in recent months.
Bush’s family, and literally his father, put Jeb Bush on the national stage as a young man when his father was vice president and then ran for president. But Jeb would cut his own national profile as Florida governor, first overseeing the recount of the Florida vote after the 2000 presidential election when his brother was the Republican nominee and affirmed the winner by the Supreme Court. Later, Bush opposed the wishes of the husband of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman whose 1990 heart attack had left her in a vegetative state. Schiavo’s husband wanted her nutrition tubes removed, as a way of ending her life support. After they were removed, Bush ordered them reconnected but was overruled by a federal court.
Bush has faced comparisons with his brother and father, but he’s has aggressively worked to define himself as unique from them. He attended the University of Texas (his father and brother went to Yale) and he’s bilingual.
His decision ensured the possibility of a general election showdown between two political dynasties as Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination.
He formally made his announcement June 15. “I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching,” Bush said, opening his campaign at a rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College, where the institution’s large and diverse student body symbolizes the nation he seeks to lead.
He addressed the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience.
“In any language,” Bush said, “my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead in America the greatest time ever to be alive in this world.”
The family was represented at the event by Jeb Bush’s mother and former first lady, Barbara Bush, who once said that the country didn’t need yet another Bush as president, and by his son George P. Bush, recently elected Texas land commissioner.
Before the event, the Bush campaign came out with a new logo — Jeb! — that conspicuously leaves out the Bush surname.
Months later, he has not garnered the front-runner status expected by the media and Republican establishment. In late October, Bush drastically slashing campaign spending, including an across-the-board pay cut for staff, and focusing more narrowly on early states, as the one-time front-runner seeks to salvage his bid for the GOP nomination.
The changes marked a significant setback for a campaign that spent months building a large operation, but there were no signs that Bush was on the verge of withdrawing from the race.
His support
He gives his party a powerful tool for courting the nation’s surging Hispanic population. Bush has been among the GOP’s most outspoken advocates for immigration reform — including a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who are living in the country illegally.
Bush said his campaign does not have a Hispanic outreach strategy, because “outreach is a term that makes it sound like it’s on the periphery.”
“There is no outreach plan here, this is an integral part of my campaign,” said Bush, who is fluent in Spanish and whose wife, Columba, is a Mexican immigrant. “I have Hispanic children. I have Hispanic grandchildren. I’m part of the community.”
Despite the recent campaign cutbacks, when campaign funding reports came out midyear, Bush shattered political fundraising records with a $114-million haul in the first six months of the year, an extraordinary total designed to instill a sense of shock and awe into his Republican competitors. However, the signs of support from the money wasn’t so clear-cut for his campaign even then.
He helped raise the money, but Bush had no direct control over 90 percent of the haul. The total announced in July included $103 million raised by Right to Rise, a super PAC supporting Bush in the crowded GOP contest. The rest, $11.4 million, came into Bush’s formal campaign. By law, the super PAC can’t take direction from Bush’s Miami-based campaign, and the two operations have limits on how they can communicate.
His critics
He launched his own Foundation for Excellence in Education in 2008 after he completed two terms as Florida’s governor from 1999-2007. His support of Common Core education standards make him unacceptable to many in the conservative bloc.
Tea party leader Mark Meckler spoke on the day of Bush’s presidential announcement, saying the former governor’s positions on education and immigration are “a nonstarter with many conservatives.”
“There are two political dynasties eyeing 2016,” said Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the movement’s largest organizations, and now leader of Citizens for Self-Governance. “And before conservatives try to beat Hillary, they first need to beat Bush.”
