But by law, Bush’s super PAC can’t take direction from Bush’s Miami-based campaign, and the two operations have limits on how they can communicate.
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The super-PAC’s massive fundraising total doesn’t necessarily represent a huge swell of popular support.
The bulk of the money was collected by the super PAC supporting Bush’s campaign, Right to Rise U.S, which has raised $103 million since January.
The Super PAC’s haul dispels media reports in early June that said it would fall short of its mammoth fundraising target, a development that would have been a major blow for Bush given the expectation that his whirlwind fundraising blitz, featuring elite, $1 million-a-head fundraisers, would surpass all money-raising records. “Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows”.
As Clinton nodded in agreement, he said: “If you get this job the next day, it doesn’t matter what was wrong with your opponent”.
Some campaign reformers reflected on the past six months by charging that Bush had made a mockery of the super PAC system. The rest, $11.4 million, came into Bush’s formal campaign.
The two Yale graduates, governors and ex- presidents joked and teased each other like old friends while discussing politics and leadership during the graduation of the inaugural class of their joint Presidential Leadership Scholars program at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that the number of work hours put in by Americans is most as compared to any other large and industrial nation.
Campaign finance watchdog groups are keeping close tabs on the interaction of presidential campaigns and super PACS. But in an attempt to respond to the DNC’s earlier criticism, a Bush aide issued a statement: “Under President Obama, we have the lowest work-force participation rate since 1977, and too many Americans are falling behind”.
In announcing its fundraising Thursday, Right to Rise said it had about 9,400 donors who had given $25,000 or less, and about 500 who’d given more.
FactCheck.org has noted before that state job growth statistics can be sliced and diced in so many ways that it’s hard to know what is real. And Bush’s super PAC in particular is reported to be playing an even greater role than is traditionally done by outside groups, taking on more of the day-to-day functions typically run out of a campaign headquarters. But most of this total comes from his super PACs, which he avidly fundraised for before announcing he was actually running for president. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a conservative firebrand loathed by members of the party establishment, raised about $US14.3 million for his campaign through the end of June, much of it from a loyal following of small donors eager to prevent Bush’s anointment. “One by one, almost 300 of Jeb Bush’s top donors, from New York, Washington, Miami – even Americans living overseas in China and Germany – climbed aboard a trolley here” – in Kennebunkport, Maine – “for a trip a mile and a half down Ocean Avenue”.
In exchange for gathering $27,000 worth of donations in the first 15 days of the campaign, donors were rewarded with an “evening picnic” with Bush and his parents, ex- President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, and a morning “political and campaign briefing” with senior campaign officials.
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Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders called out Jeb Bush by name several times at a panel event in Arlington, Virginia Thursday night.
