Gentlemen, start your spending.
Jeb Bush and the superPAC supporting him have raised the most money of any campaign so far. And now, post-Labor Day, the super PAC is about to put that money to use.
Right to Rise superPAC, which has raised more than $100 million, is going up with $24 million in television ads in the three key early presidential nominating states. Ads go up Tuesday in Iowa and New Hampshire and then South Carolina in a week, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
The people behind the superPAC say their polling shows Bush is not well known beyond his last name even in a state like New Hampshire, which is supposed to be fertile ground for him, an establishment Republican. So, he has some work to do, and the biggest arrow in any campaign's quiver is TV advertising. It's also the most expensive, but that's why Bush is not counted out.
He still has some of the best minds in Republican politics behind him, and he's the best-funded.
Still, his lagging in the polls has caused some pause for Bush's network of donors given that he was the front-runner in the GOP primary before the Summer of Trump.
Since the last debate, Bush has made a concerted effort to distinguish himself from Trump — and that's by design.
"Everybody knows Trump's story," veteran GOP operative Mike Murphy told the Tampa Bay Times. Murphy is running the superPAC. "That's why Trump has a ceiling. He has an appeal to maybe a third of the primary voters, which is why he'll never be nominated. Our focus is Jeb's much wider appeal and how do we communicate that to voters in the early states."
Two of the ads are below. They focus on Bush's record as governor of Florida and paints him as "proven conservative, real results":
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