Jeb Bush (22709849565).jpg

John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. A member of the Bush political family, he was an unsuccessful candidate for president of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries.

Bush, who grew up in Houston, was the second son of former President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush, and a younger brother of former President George W. Bush. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a degree in Latin American affairs. In 1980, he moved to Florida and pursued a career in real estate development. In 1986, Bush became Florida's Secretary of Commerce. He served until 1988. At that time, he joined his father's successful campaign for the Presidency.

In 1994, Bush made his first run for office, losing the election for governor by less than two percentage points to the incumbent Lawton Chiles. Bush ran again in 1998 and defeated lieutenant governor Buddy MacKay with 55 percent of the vote. He ended up succeeding MacKay after Chiles died in office 23 days shy of his retirement. He ran for reelection in 2002, defeating Bill McBride and winning with 56 percent, to become Florida's first two-term Republican governor. During his eight years as governor, Bush pushed an ambitious Everglades conservation plan, supported caps for medical malpractice litigation, launched a Medicaid privatization pilot program, and instituted reforms to the state education system, including the issuance of vouchers and promoting school choice.

Bush announced his presidential candidacy on June 15, 2015. He suspended his campaign on February 20, 2016, shortly after the South Carolina primary, and endorsed Senator Ted Cruz on March 23, 2016.

Early life

Jeb Bush was born on February 11, 1953, in Midland, Texas. When he was six years old, the family relocated to the Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston, Texas. The nickname "Jeb" is composed of his initials J.E.B. (John Ellis Bush).

He grew up with two younger brothers, Neil and Marvin, one younger sister, Dorothy, one older brother, George, who is seven years older, and, for the first eight months of his life, an older sister, Robin. Jeb Bush initially attended Grady Elementary School in Houston. Following in the footsteps of his father and older brother George, at the age of 14 years in late 1967, Bush began attending high school at the Andover, Massachusetts boarding school Phillips Academy, Andover. Bush completed ninth grade in Houston, but was advised to repeat it at Andover, and was nearly expelled due to poor grades. Bush recreationally used marijuana, hashish, and cigarettes during his high school years, although he made the honor roll by the end of his senior year and served as captain of the tennis team.

At the age of 17, Bush taught English as a second language and assisted in the building of a school in Ibarrilla, a small village outside of León, Guanajuato, Mexico, as part of Andover's student exchange summer program. While in Mexico, he met his future wife, Columba Garnica Gallo.

Bush, who had largely avoided criticizing or supporting the Vietnam War, registered for the draft after his graduation from high school in 1971. In the fourth and final draft lottery drawing, on February 2, 1972, for men born in 1953 and to be inducted during 1973, Bush received a draft number of 26 on a calendar-based scale that went to 365. But no new draft orders were issued after 1972, because the U.S. changed to an all-volunteer military beginning in 1973.

Though many in his family had attended Yale University, Bush chose to attend the University of Texas at Austin, beginning in September 1971. He played on the Texas Longhorns varsity tennis team in 1973. Bush graduated Phi Beta Kappa and '' magna cum laude'' with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin American studies. He completed his coursework in two and a half years.

Early career

In 1974, Bush went to work in an entry-level position in the international division of Texas Commerce Bank, which was founded by the family of James Baker. In November 1977, he was sent to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to open a new operation for the bank, where he served as branch manager and vice president.

Following the 1980 presidential election, Bush and his family moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a 32-year-old Cuban immigrant and self-made millionaire. Codina had made a fortune in a computer business, and then formed a new company, The Codina Group, to pursue opportunities in real estate. During his time with the company, Bush focused on finding tenants for commercial developments. Codina eventually made Bush his partner in a new development business, which quickly became one of South Florida's leading real estate development firms. As a partner, Bush received 40% of the firm's profits.Swasy, Alecia and Trigaux, Robert
"Make the Money and Run"
, ''St. Petersburg Times'' (September 20, 1998). In 1983, Bush said of his move from Houston to Miami: "On the personal side, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were already living here." On the professional side, "I want to be very wealthy, and I'll be glad to tell you when I've accomplished that goal."

During Bush's years in Miami, he was involved in many different entrepreneurial pursuits, including working for a mobile phone company, serving on the board of a Norwegian-owned company that sold fire equipment to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, becoming a minority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, buying a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and getting involved in a project selling water pumps in Nigeria.

Bush was a lobbyist for Miguel Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), a Florida-based health maintenance organization (HMO). Recarey "employed" Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a 75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place. Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC to waive a rule of Medicare enrollee proportion. Recarey received US$781 million in Medicare payments for 197 000 enrollees but did not pay doctors and hospitals for their care. As of 2015 Recarey was a fugitive living in Spain. The IMC fraud was one of the largest in Medicare history.

Early political career

Bush volunteered for his father's campaigns in 1980 and 1988. During the 1980 campaign, Bush worked as an unpaid volunteer, and expressed great admiration for his father. In the mid-1980s, Bush got his start in Florida politics as the Chairman of the Dade County Republican Party.Date, S.V.
Jeb
'', p. 223 (Penguin, 2007). Dade County played an important role in the 1986 election of Bob Martinez to the Governor's office. In return, Martinez appointed Bush as Florida's Secretary of Commerce. He served in that role from 1987 to 1988, before resigning to work on his father's presidential campaign.

Bush frequently communicated with his father's staff from 1981 through 1992. The younger Bush recommended Dexter Lehtinen for the post of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and set up a meeting between the Bush Administration and Motorola. He also advocated for Cuban exiles living in South Florida, and supported the Cuban embargo. In 1990, Bush urged his father to pardon Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile who had been convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. Bosch was released from prison and granted residency in the U.S.Campbell, Dunca
"The Bush dynasty and the Cuban criminals."
''The Guardian'' (December 2, 2002). Retrieved September 9, 2010.

In 1989, Bush was the campaign manager of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American to serve in Congress, in her special election.Adams, David and Simon, Stephanie.
"Jeb Bush: Party elder statesman or 2016 candidate?"
, ''Reuters'' (June 25, 2012). In 1994, Bush launched an unsuccessful bid for the Governor's office against incumbent Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles. Bush ran that year as a conservative. At one point, he was asked what he would do for African Americans, and Bush responded: "It's time to strive for a society where there's equality of opportunity, not equality of results. So I'm going to answer your question by saying: probably nothing." Bush led through much of the campaign. Then with just a few weeks before election day, Bush ran a campaign ad featuring the mother of a 10-year-old girl who had been abducted and murdered many years before. The ad opened with pictures of the girl and then shifted to her mother who gave a description of her daughter's case and then said "Her killer is still on death row and we're still waiting for justice. We won't get it from Lawton Chiles because he's too liberal on crime. . . Lawton Chiles has let us down. . . I know Jeb Bush. He'll make criminals serve their sentences and enforce the death penalty. Lawton Chiles won't." The ad caused a storm of controversy. Florida prosecutors and former Supreme Court justices toured the state with Chiles saying that Bush didn't know what he was talking about. It was compared, including by a rankled Chiles, to the Willie Horton ad run on behalf of Bush's father in 1988. Bush further caused himself problems after being asked by reporters shortly after the ad started airing if signing death warrants immediately would have changed the outcome of the case by saying "No." With polls showing that voters had doubts about Bush's integrity, Chiles began pounding on the theme that Bush could not be trusted. In every commercial, no matter what the subject, Chiles ended with the tagline: "That's why we can't trust Jeb Bush with our future." At the candidates last debate, the only one of the campaign held in prime time, moderator Tim Russert asked Bush how he could continue to justify running the ad that was "by your own admission, misleading." Bush responded that the ad was no longer being aired because it had "completed," but that he would have kept it on the air longer. He tried to justify running it by saying that Chiles was in his opinion, "liberal on crime," and hadn't yet acted on some other death warrants. Chiles said when it was his turn to respond that he had supported the death penalty all his life and that he had executed as many people as governor, eight, as the previous two administrations; that "as Governor, I hold the phone as they walk into the death chamber, I give the last command before they pull the switch." And then he said: "You put on this ad, Jeb. You knew it was false. You even admitted it was false. . . I'm ashamed that you would use the agony of a mother and the loss of her daughter in an ad like this. It's demagoguery, pure and simple. Every paper in the state has looked at that ad; everyone of them has said it is a new low. Your father had the record in the Willie Horton ad, but you've outdone that. And Jeb, I'll tell you how long you ran that ad, you ran that ad til' your polls started telling you you were taking a beating on it, and you still are taking a beating on it! It was a mistake, you shouldn't have done it," as whoops and applause rang out from Chiles partisans in the audience (incidentally, the girl in the ad's convicted killer would not be executed until 2013, during the administration of Governor Rick Scott). Bush lost the election by only 63,940 votes out of 4,206,076 that were cast for the major party candidates (2,135,008; 51% to 2,071,068; 49%). In the same election year, his older brother, George, was elected Governor of Texas. Following his election loss, Bush joined the board of The Heritage Foundation and continued to work with Codina Partners. Alongside T. Willard Fair, the president of the Urban League's Miami affiliate, Bush helped to establish Florida's first charter school.

Governor of Florida

Bush ran again for governor in 1998, defeating Democrat Buddy MacKay, who was lieutenant governor. Bush ran for reelection in 2002 to become Florida's first two-term Republican governor. During his eight years as governor, Bush was credited with initiating environmental improvements, such as conservation in the Everglades, supporting caps for medical malpractice litigation, moving medicaid recipients to private systems, and instituting reforms to the state education system, including the issuance of vouchers and promoting school choice. Bush was governor when his brother George won an intensely fought election recount in Florida to become president. Bush recused himself from any official role in the recount.

1998 election bid

In 1998, Bush defeated his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay, by over 418,000 votes (2,191,105; 55 percent to 1,773,054; 45 percent) to become Governor of Florida. He campaigned as a "consensus-building pragmatist". Simultaneously, his brother, George W. Bush won a re-election victory for a second term as Governor of Texas, and they became the first siblings to govern two states simultaneously since Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller governed New York and Arkansas from 1967 to 1971.

In the 1998 election, Bush garnered 61 percent of the Hispanic vote and 14 percent of the African American vote.

2002 re-election bid

Bush was unopposed in the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary, and in the general election he faced Democratic challenger Bill McBride. They met for two debates, in the most expensive Florida gubernatorial election yet. Voting went smoothly. Bush defeated McBride 56 percent to 43 percent, a greater margin of victory than in 1998.

Bush won 44 percent of the state's Jewish vote in the 2002 race. Bush also won the white female vote in the swing-voting battleground of Central Florida's I-4 corridor. However, he was not able to replicate the same success with African American voters (like he had earlier in 1998), winning only 8 percent of the African American vote. He became the first Republican governor of Florida to win re-election.

Tenure

Economic policy

While governor, Bush presided over a state government that reduced taxes by 19 billion and he vetoed 2 billion in new spending, according to ''The Wall Street Journal''. An analysis conducted by economist Martin Sullivan, which eliminated the effects of the federal estate tax repeal (which did not require legislative action to go into effect) and inflation, estimated the cumulative reduction in taxes by the state at closer to 13 billion during Bush's tenure, resulting in tax savings by 2006 of 140 per person, per year. A substantial amount of the tax savings in the higher estimate came from the phasing out of the federal estate tax law implemented in 2001 under President George W. Bush, for a total tax savings of 848 million per year; Jeb Bush did not push for a replacement with a state tax. The biggest reduction in taxes was due to the elimination of the state's Intangible Personal Property Tax, which applied to holdings of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and money market funds.

During Bush's tenure, the state also increased its reserves from 1.3 billion to 9.8 billion, which coincided with Florida receiving the highest possible bond rating for the first time. According to Kurt Wenner, VP of research at Florida Tax Watch, Bush was governor during one of the strongest revenue periods for the state of Florida, due in part to the boom in property values, so that revenue grew despite the tax cuts he implemented.

Bush reduced the state's government workforce by 11 percent. In May 2006, as part of a 448.7 million line-item veto of state funding, he cut a total of 5.8 million in grants to public libraries, pilot projects for library homework help and web-based high-school texts, and funding for a joint-use library in Tampa.

As Governor of Florida, Bush received grades of B in 2000, A in 2002, B in 2004, and C in 2006 from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in their biennial Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's governors.

Education policy

Bush's administration emphasized public education reform. His "A+ Plan" established heightened standards, required testing of all students, and graded all Florida schools. From 1998 to 2005, reading scores of 4th grade students in Florida on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased 11 points, compared to 2.5 points nationally, according to the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank which opposes standardized testing.

Bush has been a proponent of school vouchers and charter schools, especially in areas of the state with failing public schools, although to date very few schools have received failing grades from the state. He established the McKay Scholarship Program which provides vouchers for students with learning disabilities to attend a school of their choice. He also established the A+ Opportunity Scholarship Program which provided vouchers to students. This program was struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006.

Bush helped create the Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship which provides corporations with tax credits for donations to Scholarship Funding Organizations. Those organizations must spend 100% of the donations on scholarships for low income students.

Bush declined to raise taxes for education, which led him to oppose a ballot initiative to amend the Florida Constitution to cap growing school class sizes. Bush said he had "a couple of devious plans if this thing passes". Despite his opposition, the amendment passed.

In higher education, Bush approved three new medical schools during his tenure and also put forth the "One Florida" proposal, an initiative that had the effect of ending affirmative action admissions programs at state universities. These moves were among the concerns that led to the faculty of the University of Florida to deny Bush an honorary degree, while the University of Florida Alumni Association made him an honorary alumnus.

Health policy

As governor, Bush proposed and passed into law major reform to the medical liability system. The Florida Senate, a majority of which were Republican, opposed Bush's proposed caps on non-economic damages for injury and wrongful death. Bush insisted, and called the legislature into five special sessions. The contentious debate even included a senior Bush staffer calling for primary opposition to Republicans who disagreed with the Governor on the reforms. Eventually, the legislature agreed to the caps and Bush's reforms passed. In 2014, after Bush left office, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the damage cap – the "centerpiece" of the 2003 legislation that Bush had pushed for – to be a violation of the state Constitution's equal protection clause, discriminating against "those who are most grievously injured, those who sustain the greatest damage and loss, and multiple claimants."

Bush passed a reform to Florida's Medicaid system that moved recipients into private managed care systems.

Bush was involved in the Terri Schiavo case, involving a woman with massive brain damage, who was on a feeding tube for over 15 years, and whose husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, wished to remove the tube. This move was opposed by Terri Schiavo's parents in the courts. Bush signed " Terri's Law", legislation passed by the Florida legislature that authorized him, as governor, to keep Schiavo on life support. The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court on September 23, 2004. That decision was appealed to the federal courts. On January 24, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, thus allowing the Florida court's ruling to stand.

While Governor of Florida, Bush was opposed to abortion. He supported a law requiring parental notification for teen abortions and requested that the courts appoint a guardian for the unborn child of a mentally disabled woman who had been raped. Choose Life, a pro-life advocacy group based in Ocala, Florida, submitted a specialty license plate application—previously vetoed by Governor Lawton Chiles—which passed both houses and was signed into law by Bush on June 8, 1999.

Other policies

Bush signed legislation to restore the Everglades in 2000 as part of a 8 billion project in conjunction with the federal government. He also set aside over one million acres of land for conservation as part of a land purchase program.

In 2001, Bush eliminated civil service protection for over 16,000 state jobs, which had the effect of making it easier to fire employees in those positions. In addition, he issued an executive order which removed racial preferences in state contracting.

In 2004, Bush supported an unsuccessful bill to allow illegal immigrants to be issued drivers licenses by the state.

Bush supported more than a dozen new protections for gun owners. In 2005, he signed into law Florida's stand-your-ground law, which was the first such state law in the United States.

Bush is an advocate of capital punishment and 21 prisoners were executed during his term. After the execution of Ángel Nieves Díaz was seemingly botched—it took 37 minutes to complete, and required a second injection of the lethal chemicals—he suspended all executions in Florida on December 15, 2006.

During Bush's tenure, the racial and gender diversity of the state's judicial bench increased. However, according to the ''Wall Street Journal'', Democrats criticized some of Bush's judicial appointments as being "overtly partisan and political".

Veto of high-speed rail and other vetoes

Bush often used the line-item veto to limit state spending. He exercised his veto to stop other legislation as well (such as a bill about "parenting coordinators").

In 1995, the Florida state legislature created the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) and came up with a public-private partnership model. Government would build the system leveraging state dollars with federal funds and tax-free bonding. The private sector was to invest money in the project, help design and build the network, and be given the franchise to operate the trains (known as design-build-operate-maintain, or DBOM). Trains would be privately owned, similar to how the airline industry operates in a publicly financed airport.Florida High Speed Rail – Overview
. Florida Bullet Train.org. Retrieved on 2010-11-09.

The rail system and its planning was estimated to cost $7–$8 billion. The Florida HSRA and the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) reached an agreement with a consortium that included the Fluor Corporation and Bombardier Transportation. The consortium agreed to invest $300 million and utilize the DBOM functionality. The state of Florida would float state bonds, and FDOT would commit $70 million annually (increasing three percent yearly to account for inflation) to service the bonds for the next thirty years. Federal monies would pay for the interest on the bonds, and the state monies would satisfy the principal. When the high-speed railroad was running, operating surpluses would also be applied to the debt.

The high-speed rail project nearly came to fruition until Bush became governor in 1999 and ended the project his second day in office, stating that the venture posed too much risk and cost for Florida taxpayers. State legislators reacted by adding the project on the 2000 ballot as a constitutional amendment which was ultimately passed by voters. The amendment directed Bush and legislature to start building the railroad system by 2003. Bush vetoed funding for both the project and the board, and led a high-profile campaign to repeal the constitutional requirement that mandated the construction of the high-speed system. Voters repealed the constitutional amendment. Many who voted believed they were supporting the train, though in fact a "yes" vote was to approve the repeal.

FDOT spokesperson Nazih Haddah commented that "the rhetoric was inflammatory and misleading. It was really exaggerating tactics that were used to defeat this. The financing and the project were sound. It really squandered a great opportunity for this state." Other public officials stated that Bush's underhanded tactics were emblematic of his willingness to protect moneyed interests – including developers, energy producers and highway builders – who opposed a shift toward mass transit and helped fund the repeal effort. "It's that arrogance of kind of the 1%," said Orlando transportation engineer Ian Lockwood.

Public opinion polling

According to ''The Miami Herald during his eight years in office.Bush transformed state politics
The Miami Herald