No longer patient, Jeb Bush backers fret about sluggish campaign
For months, Jeb Bush‘s campaign insisted it was too early. Too early to worry about the Republican presidential candidate’s sluggish poll numbers. Too early to fret over the rise of unorthodox candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Too early to question if the one-time front-runner is merely a pedestrian candidate. But with just over three months until primary voting gets underway in Iowa, and Bush still mired in the middle of the crowded GOP field, some supporters fear it could soon be too late. “The moment is now,” said New Hampshire State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, reflecting the sense of urgency among nearly two dozen Bush supporters interviewed this past week by The Associated Press. On Friday, Bush signaled to supporters he understood the need to make a change. Faced with slower-than-expected fundraising, the campaign announced sweeping spending cuts, including a 40 percent payroll reduction, that will deplete staff at its Miami headquarters and refocus resources in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — the first four states to hold nominating contests. “It means I have the ability to adapt,” Bush said of the changes. “The circumstances when we started the election were different.” But interviews with supporters in early states reveal concerns that extend far beyond the campaign’s allocation of resources. There are fears Bush is failing to distinguish himself from his rivals, despite a month of aggressive television advertising. Many said they were eager to see Bush be more assertive and forceful in debates, in his TV ads and at campaign appearances. They worry he may not be capable of doing so. “God gives us our personalities and our looks and we can’t help that,” said Robert Rowe, another New Hampshire state representative who is switching his allegiance from Bush to Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “We are who we are.” Said Bush supporter Steven Zumbach, an attorney from Des Moines, Iowa: “He’s going to need to take some risk. Unless he does something like that, it’s going to be difficult.” Bush campaign aides say they understand the anxiety, but blame it on an unusual political season that has diverted attention away from more traditional candidates — not a sign of weakness in the former Florida governor. Bush himself has urged voters to stay patient, reminding them that candidates who sit at the top of polls at this stage in the race often fade. “Four years ago Herman Cain was the front-runner. Two weeks prior to that it was Rick Perry,” Bush said Wednesday during a campaign stop in Nevada. “Both are great guys, but they didn’t win the nomination.” Indeed, many voters in Iowa and New Hampshire wait until just before their states’ contests to settle on a candidate. The outcomes in those first two states have ripple effects in South Carolina, Nevada and other states that quickly follow. There are also signs of volatility in the GOP contest. After spending the summer and fall atop the Republican field, Trump appears to be losing ground in Iowa to Carson, an untested politician with a penchant for provocative comments about Muslims and the Holocaust. Bush is still among the candidates viewed as most electable among Republican voters, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Six in 10 registered Republicans say he could possibly win a general election — putting him just below Trump and about tied with Carson atop the field. Most of those interviewed by the AP said they remain loyal to Bush. Even as his campaign fundraising slows, they see his heavily funded super PAC as an advantage that could help him outlast his rivals. They believe his methodical approach to issues and record as Florida governor make him the most qualified Republican to be president. But they wonder if there’s room for a candidate like Bush in a race where voters seem eager to voice their displeasure with Washington and anyone with a history in politics. “Within about a month, he’s going to need to step forth,” said Barbara Smeltzer, a longtime GOP activist from Dubuque, Iowa. “He’s going to have to start to show some muscle.” Added Carroll Duncan, a councilwoman in Dorchester County, South Carolina, “My main concern is that his message is not getting out there. That’s up to his campaign to turn that around.” Bush aides say they’ve been trying to do just that, with both the campaign and Right to Rise super PAC blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Right to Rise accounted for one of every two 2016 presidential ads last week, according to information collected by Kantar Media’s CMAG advertising tracker. Right to Rise began its media blitz the week of Sept. 15 with a $1.3 million buy in New Hampshire and Iowa, expanding to South Carolina the following week. The super PAC has spent about $2 million each week on ads, CMAG shows. The group’s media plans continue through mid-February — by which time it will have spent $42 million if it follows through on all of its airtime reservations. Bush’s campaign is trying to supplement the ad spending with a large footprint on the ground in early states. The campaign has 12 paid staffers in New Hampshire, 10 in Iowa, eight in Nevada and seven in South Carolina. The overhaul the campaign announced Friday aims to boost those numbers. Supporters hope the changes will be enough to keep Bush afloat through a long, and so far surprising, campaign. “Jeb is not spectacular,” said Lynn Stewart, a state assemblyman from Henderson, Nevada. “But he’s solid and steady.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
6 Republican 2016 hopefuls woo faithful at Texas megachurch
A half-dozen Republican presidential hopefuls worked to woo thousands of evangelicals at a Texas megachurch in suburban Dallas on Sunday, declaring their unwavering support for “religious liberty” even after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage and their defense of life in abortion cases and beyond. Some of those making personal appeals – Sen. Ted Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – are already darlings of Christian conservatives. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and ex Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, might like to be. But the four-plus-hour event before what organizers said was a crowd of 7,000 at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano underscored the importance of the religious right, as well as the potentially pivotal role Texas’ earlier-than-usual primary could play in the 2016 race. Prestonwood claims nearly 40,000 members over multiple Dallas-area campuses. “I’m trying to separate church and politics, but Hillary Clinton said people of faith, ‘Just have to get over it,’” Bush said. “That’s just wrong.” Not attending was GOP front-runner Donald Trump. “Everyone was invited to come but we believe the right people are in the room today,” said Pastor Jack Graham, who interviewed all the candidates about the importance of faith in their lives. He identified those gathered as evangelicals whom he called “Christians who believe the Bible.” Santorum subsequently declared himself an “evangelical Catholic.” Responding to questions about his church’s nonprofit status perhaps being violated because the event was political, Graham said that Democratic presidential hopefuls were also invited — but didn’t appear. Carson declared, “It’s time for us to bring God back to our country,” bringing the crowd to its feet despite his self-admitted “calm demeanor that people mistake as softness.” “It’s not softness; it’s just the ability to look at things from multiple perspectives without getting angry about it,” Carson clarified, saying God gave him the ability to do so. Cruz said faith in America “was under assault,” prompting some in the sprawling, stadium-style sanctuary to bellow “Yes!” He pointed to the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, and to businesses that he said had faced boycotts because they opposed same-sex weddings on religious grounds. “I believe that 2016 is going to be a religious-liberty election,” Cruz said to raucous applause. “As these threats grow darker and darker and darker, they are waking people up here in Texas and all across this country.” Fiorina was more subdued, saying her faith was once “a little abstract” since “I came to think of God as a CEO of a big enterprise. He was in charge, but he couldn’t possibly know every little detail.” But, she told the faithful, she later discovered that “each one of us can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” “God knows what’s going on in our lives,” she said, “and that personal relationship saw me through many hard times.” All candidates decried abortion. But Bush highlighted what he called his record of “defense of life” while governor, reminding the crowd that he intervened in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of a protracted court fight over having her feeding tube removed. “I didn’t talk about it,” Bush said. “I got to act.” Grassroots groups in Tea Party-dominated Texas largely have shunned Bush in favor of insurgent candidates like Cruz or Trump, but Bush has courted Christian conservatives at many events across the country organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which also helped put together Sunday’s gathering. Bush spoke last and some streamed for the exits as he took the stage — after sitting through hours of candidates and intermissions featuring gospel music and a choir rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The Plano forum also offered presidential hopefuls a chance to make inroads in Texas, the country’s largest conservative state. Officials moved the presidential primary up from May to March 1, and Texas is now set to be the largest of 13 states voting on “Super Tuesday.” Bush was born in the oil-patch town of Midland, his brother George W. was Texas governor before he was president and his father, George H.W., lives in Houston. Graham declared, “Welcome to Bush country.” Bush smiled and replied, “Is that named after my brother or my dad?” Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press.
