Jeb Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, is on track to amass $100 million by the end of this month, giving him a massive advantage over his rivals in the GOP presidential nomination race,
Politico reported.
The figure far surpasses the amount that the former Florida governor has raised for his official campaign, although Bush is planning a new fundraising effort to boost that war chest as well.
According to Politico, Bush is timing the formal announcement of his candidacy, probably in mid-June, around a cross-country tour aimed at adding to his campaign reserves.
The political news website says that Right to Rise will give Bush "a leg-up" in the Republican nomination contest, especially if it becomes a long, drawn-out and expensive campaign.
"It’s an advantage. No question," said Fred Malek, a leading GOP donor who chairs the Republican Governors Association’s finance committee. "I think Bush will be able to raise three or four times as much as anyone else."
A top adviser to a rival Republican candidate said, "People are looking at that $100 million figure and wondering, 'Is it going to be aimed at us?' Any time you’re within a stone’s throw of the Bush campaign, you’re in the radius of the baseball bat."
Bush’s advisers are hoping that his campaign and his super PAC will work together "seamlessly" even though they will be prohibited legally from coordinating their efforts when he formally announces his candidacy, Politico reported.
Bush’s closet rival in the fundraising stakes is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who announced his candidacy last month, although he is expected to rake in just a fraction of what Bush will pull in.
"Some see Right to Rise as the latest development in the post-Citizens United world of political spending, where cash-flush super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, are increasingly supplanting candidates and their campaigns," wrote Politico’s Alex Isenstadt.
But Isenstadt added, "Some Republicans contend that Bush’s super PAC-centric setup poses a potentially serious hazard: That he will, in a sense, be walled off from the vehicle that has most of his financial resources. It's a dynamic that could lead to confusion or disagreements between two wings of the campaign, neither of which will be allowed to talk to the other."
Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who's helped to run several presidential campaigns, said that the big danger for Bush is that his campaign and his super PAC will end up going in "two different directions."
"What’s going to happen is, you’re going to end up with two campaigns," Rollins told Politico.