Jeb Bush raised $11.4m in 16 days after formally launching his campaign

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/09/jeb-bush-campaign-funding-president

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Jeb Bush raised $11.4m in 16 days after formally launching his campaign for president, his campaign said on Thursday. The total is a fraction of what the former Florida governor has pulled in overall to support his White House ambitions.

Bush is taking a unique approach to a presidential bid, delegating many operations to an affiliated group that is free of limits on how much money a traditional campaign can raise from individual donors.

The affiliated group, a Super Pac called Right to Rise, has been active since January. Run by a trusted Bush strategist, it is expected to report having raised as much as $100m in the past six months. Such a total is sure to eclipse the fundraising of each of the other 16 major competitors for the Republican nomination.

“People have been willing to take a look, and he’s overcome the people who have said, ‘Not another Bush,’” said Bill Kunkler, a Chicago construction company executive and Bush donor. “People are looking at him as a guy who did it on his own, and who stands on his own.”

The $11.4m raised by Bush’s formal campaign came in contributions that were limited to checks of no more than $2,700 for the primary and general election. Bush must provide fundraising details, including the names of donors and how much they gave, to federal regulators by Wednesday night.

Like Bush, several Republican candidates have said ahead of that deadline how much they raised. Among them, Texas senator Ted Cruz raised $14.2m, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson raised $10.5m and former Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina raised $1.4m.

The son and brother of two presidents, Bush came to the race with a deep roster of experienced fundraisers and likely donors. With their help, he traveled the country raising money for Right to Rise after saying in December that he planned to explore a campaign.

The Super Pac is based in Los Angeles where its leader, Mike Murphy, lives. It plans to handle a huge part of the costly work of running for president, including buying TV, online and radio commercials, conducting polling and even doing some organising tasks such as voter outreach in early primary states.

By law, it cannot take direction from the campaign, and the two operations have limits on how they can communicate.

Right to Rise is advertising on Bush’s behalf. It has spent $47,000 so far on digital media, according to documents filed this week with the Federal Election Commission. The group has also inquired with broadcast and cable stations in the early primary states about booking TV ad time.

Bush’s official campaign bank account, although notably smaller than the Super Pac’s, is important because it will pay for his travel and employee salaries and give him a pot of money from which to craft messages exactly as he sees fit.