Jeb Bush Shifts Resources to Early States

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is shifting funds away from television advertising buys and toward getting more staffers on the ground in early-voting states, according to reports, as his campaign enters 2016 stuck in the middle of the crowded pack.

Ahead of the Iowa caucuses in February, Bush is reportedly doubling his staff and canceling ad buys, the Des Moines Register reports. The former Florida governor is currently in fifth place in Iowa, with a mere 6% in the newspaers’s latest poll. Bush will return to Iowa to campaign in early January.

Meanwhile, the campaign told staffers that almost everyone working in its Miami headquarters would be sent instead to early-voting states, Politico reports. “For us, we’re making a strategic resource reallocation,” Bush spokesman Tim Miller told Politico.

Bush’s campaign and a super PAC supporting him have spent heavily on the airwaves, with the candidate and his allies starting the campaign amid hopes that an overwhelming financial advantage would prove unsurmountable. Instead, he has struggled to gain traction against candidates seemingly more suited to the angry, anti-establishment fervor in the Republican base, consistently trailing candidates like Donald Trump and now also trailing Ted Cruz.