For the third time since launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is going back to the drawing board.
According to Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, the Bush campaign—desperate to pick up some momentum, or to at the very least reverse their candidate’s sinking poll numbers—has decided to shift millions of dollars in TV advertising into on-the-ground operations in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Nearly the entire Miami headquarters staff is being redeployed as part of the new strategy:
“On a Wednesday afternoon staff-wide conference call, top campaign officials, including campaign manager Danny Diaz, informed employees that the deployment would be staggered throughout the month of January. The campaign is expected to dispatch between 50 and 60 staffers in Miami and elsewhere, with 20 going to New Hampshire and 10 or more going to Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada.”
According to the Politico report, Bush’s campaign now considers New Hampshire a must-win proposition for the campaign. Currently, Bush sits in sixth place according to the 30-day polling average in the Granite State, but is within the margin of error of second-place Marco Rubio.
With the campaign shifting funds away from TV advertising, the Politico report suggests the pro-Bush Super PAC “Right to Rise” will be expected to pick up the slack:
“For its TV presence, the campaign will find itself increasingly reliant on Right to Rise, the super PAC that has been airing tens of millions of dollars in advertisements on Bush’s behalf. The group, which operates independently of the campaign, has reserved advertising time in all four early states.
A Right to Rise spokesman, Paul Lindsay, said Wednesday afternoon that the super PAC would be ‘evaluating progress on the ground and augmenting our TV buys in early states where we see a need.'”
The campaign has also reached out to former George W. Bush administration staff to seek their assistance in the early states.
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