Jeb Bush has dropped to 4 percent support among the GOP presidential field according to a newly released Pew Research Center poll. Asked about his response to his donors while campaigning in New Hampshire, Bush compared his path to 2008 Republican nominee John McCain.
“I just remind them that this time eight years ago John McCain was traveling through the Atlanta airport and I saw him,” Bush said, as ABC News reports. “He had no aide, no person, he was by himself because his campaign was supposed to be ended. He won the Republican primary that year.”
“This is how the process works,” he added. “”You gotta go earn it…The people I’m talking to and listening to are going to be the ones that decide who the nominee’s going to be and I believe I’m gonna be that person.”
Ann Marie Banfield, education liaison with Cornerstone Action in New Hampshire, however, tells Breitbart News she thinks Bush isn’t listening on the issue of Common Core and student data privacy.
“I attended one of Bush’s town halls in New Hampshire, and clearly we have a difference on Common Core,” she said. “He supports it, I do not. He’s tried to spin his support in the past, but he simply does not oppose it or work to oppose it.”
Banfield, who is speaking on Common Core at a forum on federalism Saturday at Southern New Hampshire University, said she asked Bush about President Obama’s “gutting of the FERPA” student data privacy law.
“That law was put in place to protect the privacy of students in the public schools,” she explained. “The gutting involved removing protections that were in place that required schools to get parental written consent before a school could share information on their students.”
“That law is no longer in place and, yes, schools can now take personal info on your children and release this info without your knowledge or consent,” Banfield continued. “I asked Bush if he would reverse that decision and close that loophole. He mentioned he would issue an executive order to protect privacy of students, but then said that aggregate data could be released. He didn’t mention reinstituting written parental consent.”
Banfield said Bush had only 200 attendees at his town hall, while GOP frontrunner Donald Trump had 3,500 at his event in Keene.
“Trump has called Common Core a ‘disaster,” and he’s right,” she said. “I tend to think Bush has a segment of supporters, but I’m wondering if he has the ability to reach other voters like Trump is doing right now. Bush has put himself in this position along with the other governors who followed Obama on Common Core.”
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