In what was already a grim week for the Jeb Bush campaign, a bit more bad news late last Thursday night.
After a meeting in Houston on Oct. 26th, the campaign sent parts of a presentation to reporters detailing how they saw the race moving forward. But the day after Bush's debate performance, U.S. News and World Report obtained the whole document, including detailed plans for what the campaign had, or, really, hadn't, done so far in Iowa.
The Iowa Starting Line blog was stunned by what it saw. "[A] brief look at their Iowa numbers show extremely troubling signs for Bush’s viability in the caucus," wrote Pat Rynard, assessing a spreadsheet full of single-digit numbers that represented the campaign's outreach in the state. Rynard summarizes: "[Y]ou don’t even have to be a former caucus or Iowa campaign staffer to realize how troubling their internal Iowa metrics look."
But there may be a silver lining, a silver lining of which the campaign was very aware. Former Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter: The "leak," like so many "leaks," may have been an intentional move to pass information to a pro-Bush super PAC.
Bush's campaign got a lot of credit for its massive fundraising push at the beginning of the campaign. The largest figure, though, was money that flowed into Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting the former Florida Governor. In the first half of this year, Right to Rise raised over $100 million, money that it can spend on Bush's behalf.
The problem for the PAC is that it can't coordinate legally with Bush on where to spend that fortune. It has to do its own thing, making educated guesses about where and how to advertise or otherwise contact voters.
Unless, that is, there's public information it can act on. Bush's campaign can't call Right to Rise and say, "Hey, we need help in Iowa." It can however, make an internal document public for the world, and the PAC, to see.
CLICK HERE to read Philip Bump's article in the Washington Post.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment