Are the Presidential hopes of Jeb! Bush about to go bye bye? Although pundits should know better than to write someone off, all signs the past few weeks with his sinking or inert poll numbers and how Bush has been defending his brother’s presidency have pointed to him being unable to move his campaign forward. This is most assuredly not what Jeb or his family had in mind when he entered the race — mega-funded with a family tarnished in reputation by you-know-doubleya-who but still belonging to political royalty.
Within the past 24 hours two developments suggest a campaign very much in trouble.
1. The Bush campaign is doing across the boards pay cuts. Bloomberg Politics:
Jeb Bush, once a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is slashing pay across the board for his struggling campaign as he attempts to regain traction just 100 days before the party’s first nominating contest.
The campaign is removing some senior staff from the payroll, parting ways with some consultants, and downsizing its Miami headquarters to save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent this week, according to Bush campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak about internal changes. Senior leadership positions remain unchanged.
Does this sound like a healthy campaign?
The campaign is also cutting back 45 percent of its budget, except for dollars earmarked for TV advertising and spending for voter contacts, such as phone calls and mailers. Some senior-level staff and consultants will continue to work with the campaign on a volunteer basis, while other junior-level consultants, primarily in finance but including other areas, will be let go, the officials said. The officials declined to say who would be removed from the payroll or provide an exact dollar figure for the savings. (A summary of the changes, provided to Bloomberg Politics by the campaign, is posted here.)
“You have to adapt.”
Yes, there is the inevitable spin. If you “adapt,” why are you having to adapt? Because your poll numbers are lousy and money to fund the day to day campaign is drying up.
Bush’s advisers, under pressure from their donors and from falling and stagnant poll numbers, have been discussing ways to retool the campaign in recent days, and came to the conclusion that a course correction was essential. While recent tangles with Donald Trump have energized the campaign, Bush’s senior team recognized a more fundamental set of changes was required that didn’t involve dealing directly with the party’s surprising—and surprisingly durable—front-runner.
“The circumstances when we started the election were different,” Bush told Pat Robertson in an interview at Regent University hours after news of the shakeup broke. “I have not met a person that thought that Donald Trump would be the front running candidate at this point. God bless him for his success in that regard, we’ll see how long that lasts. But you have to adapt.” He said his new “lean and mean” campaign will allow him to do that. “Every dollar we can save in overhead is a dollar that goes on television, goes on radio, goes on media, goes on voter outreach,” Bush added.
Analysts and rival campaigns will view the changes as a desperate act, perhaps the last one, of a man whose campaign has dropped in the polls in recent months and has remained mired in the middle of a crowded field despite a month-long blitz of friendly television ads. None of the changes deal directly with what even many of Bush’s supporters say is his main challenge: The burden of trying to convince voters hungry for change to choose a man whose father and brother both served as president.
It’s not just that: to many American (including some conservatives) GWB’s Presidency was among the country’s worst. Part of a brand: the brand is tarnished.
2. Bush is meeting with his family to assess his candidacy. CBS News:
Jeb Bush will attend a finance meeting this weekend in Houston convened by former President George H. W. Bush and attended by Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, CBS News has learned.
The session, designed to assess where Bush’s candidacy stands in the face of large-scale staff cutbacks and underwhelming poll numbers, will also be attended by Bush’s mother, Barbara Bush. The governor’s campaign confirmed the meeting will be held Sunday and Monday.
CBS News has also learned George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser for Jeb Bush in Georgetown (Washington, DC) on Oct. 29. The fundraising email, which went out earlier this week, was sent by George W. Bush’s two former chiefs of staff, Andy Card and Josh Bolten. Jeb Bush will not attend the fund-raiser.
The email, sent to Bush-Cheney alumni, praised Bush’s “extraordinary record of accomplishment and conservative innovation” and said that George W. Bush “looks forward to seeing his old friends at this event and to sharing his enthusiasm for Jeb’s candidacy.” Bolten and Card suggested that for those who can’t make the event, there would be “other opportunities around the country,” and the email closed, “Your help today will help position Jeb for a successful outcome.”
The event underscores the need for the former Florida governor to lean on his brother’s fund-raising prowess to aid his struggling campaign.
Earlier this month, asked whether his brother would play a bigger role in his campaign, whether he’d come to the rescue, Bush told CBS News, “No, he doesn’t have to rescue me….I’m on the path. I’m totally confident about where we are. This is a long haul.”
Over that long haul, though, those who are funding his campaign may disagree. A GOP source who interacts regularly with the Bush campaign said there is a “donor revolt in progress,” as early Bush backers have grown dismayed over the reversal of their candidate’s fortunes.
Complaints are more frequent about the Bush inner circle and Bush’s message, schedule and intensity. These anxieties are not new for Bush – they go back as far as the advent of Donald Trump’s entry into the race. But they have grown more pronounced as Bush has continued to lag, while challengers like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have gained traction and outsiders Trump and Ben Carson continue to dominate the crowded GOP field.
To be sure, it is not wise to count someone out this early in the game. Analysts always point to how Arizona Sen. John McCain seemed like toast, but then bit by bit rebuilt his campaign, got out there on the hustings and became his party’s nominee. But times have changed. The GOP — partially later on with the help of the woman McCain chose to be a heartbeat away from his Presidency, Sarah Palin — has moved substantially to the right since then.
Even his family may not be able to keep Jeb “safe” from the fact that the party’s base doesn’t seem to like what he’s selling and how he’s selling it. These are the days when “moderate” is a dirty word (except on this site) to many in BOTH parties. And to may hard-line conservatives, Jeb Bush is a moderate a heart (but then Ronald Reagan would be viewed as such if he was alive today espousing some of the positions he held during his presidency and governorship).
Jeb Bush is a more cerebral candidate offering a more traditional campaign style and tone, playing by a longtime successful playbook, in a new era in which the Republican Party has adopted the in-your-face, polarizing talk radio culture in the way candidates talk, debate, and interview people in Congressional hearings (did I mention Benghazi?). The old playbook doesn’t work the way it used to.
Jeb Bush isn’t “cool,” yet he isn’t “hot” enough to broil the red meat partisans want thrown out to them in CostCo quantities.
He also seems to be someone who might (GULP!) compromise or reach across the aisle.
And there is that name.
So tonight it’s not really “Jeb!”
It’s: Jeb?
UPDATE: Jeb Bush responds to reports suggesting his campaign is in trouble:
eb Bush responded to suggestions that recent cuts in his campaign staff and spending are an indication that his under-performing campaign is beginning to run out of steam.
A Bush campaign memo summarizing the campaign’s adjustments provided to Bloomberg News on Friday describes “aggressive changes” that include a 40% cut in payroll, “cutting salaries across the board,” reducing the staffing at the campaign’s Miami headquarters, and cutting 45% of the previous budget for “non media/voter contact” expenses.
The memo also emphasizes the financial health of the campaign, but the campaign’s weak polling and the stubborn resistance of poll numbers to the campaign’s efforts in places like New Hampshire can be seen as a dire sign.
Addressing the concern that his campaign is falling apart, Bush responded, “Blah blah blah blah, that’s my answer, blah blah blah.” He further dismissed the idea by jokingly referring to the ‘presidencies’ of Herman Cain, Hillary Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani, candidates who led polls early in their respective campaigns only to fall behind by the primary election. “October is not when you elect people, it’s February, and then you move into March and we have a campaign that is designed to win,” said Bush.
The appearance of a struggle is still a concern for the Bush campaign, however, because keeping donors confident in the campaign’s success is key to continued fundraising. Some donors may see poor performance by the campaign as a sign of a poor investment, thus leading to reduced donations and consequently worsening performance. In speaking with reporters ahead of a South Carolina town hall event, Bush denied any such downward spiral, citing more than half a million dollars raised in Detroit this week.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.