Jeb Bush’s donors are getting scared and may jump ship if a $25 million advertising campaign in October doesn’t bump up his poll numbers, says a new Politico article.
“If this $25 million doesn’t move numbers, in two weeks, that’s when you’re going to see panic set in,” a donor told Politico.
“Another Bush donor invited to [Bush headquarters in] Miami, assessing the state of anxiety within Bush’s operation on a scale of 1 to 10, put the panic level at a “6 or 7.”
“Are some people nervous? Of course. Some people are always nervous,” one of Bush’s biggest donors, also speaking anonymously, said. “And things don’t look really good right now…if the election were tomorrow, we’d be s–tting bricks. But the election isn’t tomorrow. We have time. And we have the experience on our side. No one [else] has the campaign, the infrastructure that Jeb has. And no one [else] has the money.”
But donors aren’t jumping to support Bush’s younger version, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, because there’s not enough confidence he can win against either establishment Jeb or populist Donald Trump.
“There’s less money out there than people realize,” said Katie Packer Gage, who served as Mitt Romney’s deputy campaign manager in 2012 and whose firm is doing work for Rubio in Michigan. “Lots of donors are holding their money because if [a] big donor wants anything, they want to be with a winner; and they want the right candidate.”
So far, Bush’s campaign has raised more than $103 million, but Jeb! is stuck under 10 percent in numerous GOP polls.
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