Jeb Bush campaign cuts staff, payroll
Trump, Carson eclipse former front-runner.
With stagnant poll numbers, Bush tries to regain traction in GOP presidential race.
Jeb Bush, once a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is implementing an across-theboard pay cut 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.
Bush’s advisers, under pressure from 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.
Analysts and rival campaigns will view the changes as the desperate act 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 monthlong blitz of 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.
Officials said the changes will enable them to shift more resources into early voting New Hampshire, where the campaign has the largest operation in the state, and other states where voters begin casting ballots in February. There will be more volunteers and surrogates for Bush to help in a state that his brother lost in 2000 and his father won in 1988.
Bush plans to continue to focus on a core message that argues that he has experience to make the kinds of fundamental changes voters want to see in Washington. The campaign changes reflect that, an adviser said, adding, “We expect to win.”
But in a presidential campaign cycle that has already seen stunning twists and turns, to see the presumed establishment front-runner, whose strength was based in part on his fundraising capacity, have to make these kinds of cuts, is one of the most surprising developments so far.
When his brother George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, he was the fundraising leader from start to finish and never had to contemplate such draconian cuts.
“We need to double down and triple down in the early states,” another Bush official said.
Polls from Bloomberg Politics this week showed Bush in fifth place in Iowa and a distant third in New Hampshire, reflecting the findings of other polls that show outsider candidates Trump and Ben Carson with formidable leads over the rest of the GOP pack.
When brother George W. Bush ran in 2000, he never had to contemplate such draconian cuts.