--- title: Why Some 2024 Hopefuls Should Have a Talk With Jeb Bush description: As Mike Pence and Chris Christie join Ron DeSantis in the race, none went to end up the Jeb! of 2024. Yet all are planning campaign structures similar to Bush's from 2016. canonical: https://time.com/6284300/desantis-pence-christie-2024-jeb-bush-super-pacs/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-06-02T11:00:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:58:22.213Z article:section: Politics og:title: Why Some 2024 Hopefuls Should Call Jeb Bush og:description: As Pence and Christie join DeSantis in the race, none went to end up the Jeb! of 2024. Yet all are organizing their campaigns like Jeb Bush did in one crucial way, writes Phil Elliott. og:url: https://time.com/6284300/desantis-pence-christie-2024-jeb-bush-super-pacs/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd7225e43aa16b43/698a3d83d07533031ee6e134/GettyImages-488667654.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Republican Candidates Take Part In Debates At Reagan Library In Simi Valley og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Some 2024 Hopefuls Should Call Jeb Bush twitter:description: As Pence and Christie join DeSantis in the race, none went to end up the Jeb! of 2024. Yet all are organizing their campaigns like Jeb Bush did in one crucial way, writes Phil Elliott. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd7225e43aa16b43/698a3d83d07533031ee6e134/GettyImages-488667654.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Some 2024 Hopefuls Should Have a Talk With Jeb Bush  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jun 2, 2023 11:00 AM UTC  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Jeb Bush take part in a presidential debate at the Reagan Library on September 16, 2015 in Simi Valley, California. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Jeb Bush take part in a presidential debate at the Reagan Library on September 16, 2015 in Simi Valley, California.Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jun 2, 2023 11:00 AM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ Both Mike Pence and Chris Christie are set to jump into the 2024 race next week, joining Ron DeSantis in vying for the role of leading Republican not named Donald Trump. It goes without saying that all three men are hoping to not end up the Jeb! of 2024\. Anything but that! And yet, each member of the trio appears to be taking a distinctly Jeb!-ian approach to funding and running his campaign, despite the questionable track record when contenders have adopted such a tactic. The plan [seemed](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/jeb-bush-dropping-out-set-up-to-fail-213662/) like a smart one back in 2015, at least at its [inception](https://www.npr.org/2016/02/23/467745559/where-did-all-that-jeb-bush-superpac-money-go). Rather than have the former Florida Governor chase headlines or start to chop at his 2016 rivals, he held off on all of that while Bush’s Miami headquarters focused on one thing and one alone: picking up massive [checks](https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/jeb-bush-right-to-rise-super-pac-campaign-117753) to seed a nominally separate super PAC. To bide time, Bush would filibuster when asked about politics: “10-yard penalty, loss of down,” he would [tell](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/why-jeb-bush-couldn-t-045541923.html) reporters when we asked about news of the day. The thinking was rational. Eventually, when things got rough, the super PAC and its unmatched resources could build a wall of sorts around the bookish Bush, who could meanwhile run the campaign of his own making, one focused on footnotes, wonks, and actual deliverables. Among the biggest problems in this thesis: [_Jeb! Inc._](https://www.p2016.org/bush/bushorg.html) had not anticipated the dominance of Trump, against whom [no amount](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/20/nearly-100-million-in-super-pac-money-couldnt-save-jeb-bush/) of super PAC spending or fact-based logic could matter. The other big problem: The more voters got to know Bush, the [worse](https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/jeb-bushs-path-to-defeat-began-a-year-ago/) he did. He was the [Cousin Greg](https://time.com/6281792/greg-succession-finale-theory/) of 2016\. It was as clear an [example](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/jeb-bush-leaves-behind-republican-party-he-can-barely-recognize-n522956) as exists in the super PAC era about the limits of money and its proximity to truly reorient the political environment—and one that many of the 2024 contenders these days are loath to learn. In Iowa, where Trump spoke at a Fox News town hall Thursday evening, DeSantis and his super PAC are working to [plant](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/30/politics/desantis-iowa-2024/index.html) seeds of doubt about Trump’s true conservatism. [Pence](https://www.axios.com/2023/05/16/mike-pence-super-pac-2024-presidential-election) and [Christie](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/us/politics/chris-christie-2024-election.html) are both [readying](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/31/chris-christie-trump-republican-presidential-nomination/) announcements next week now that they have similar deep-pocketed fixers watching over them. Those outside super PACs, nominally independent and legally [barred](https://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467651227/why-did-jeb-bush-lose-there-are-many-theories) from coordinating strategy with the candidate or his official team, are still seen as heaven-sent answers to fundraising challenges. Because super PACs can legally accept unlimited—and often ungodly—sums of money, they are perceived as a way to keep the candidates focused on the things that only candidates can do, like headline events, make policy speeches, and answer voters’ questions directly. The super PAC, the thinking goes, can handle the routine things that voters only passively notice, like advertising, polling, voter-registration and get-out-the-vote operations. And from the looks of it, both Pence and Christie are going to lean heavily on their super PACs to do a good chunk of the skullduggery that is campaign infrastructure. It’s a tempting proposition, but one that has never proven terribly successful. In fact, only Barack Obama’s 2012 victory stands as an example of a super PAC really making a difference in the race, having [spent](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2012/campaign-finance/pac/priorities-usa-action.html) $66 million on negative ads against Mitt Romney. Hillary Clinton’s use of the Democratic Party’s primary super PACs in 2016 [proved](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/priorities-usa-advertising-hillary-clinton.html) insufficient and too narrowly [focused](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-clinton-super-pac-223245) on hitting Trump, whose image never seemed to flake; Joe Biden’s outside pals at the same [group](https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/priorities-usa-action/C00495861/summary/2020) raised about one-quarter less in 2020 than in 2016 to focus almost exclusively on digital advertising in an environment teed up for Biden. As much as super PACs are heralded as a financial answer for candidates, they are often a source of troubles. They breed [competition](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/05/americans-progressive-action-super-pac-fake-234316) for donors, build [confusion](https://www.wsj.com/articles/roles-of-presidential-super-pacs-expanding-1430437766) in voters’ minds, spark [conflicts](https://www.newsweek.com/super-pac-donations-citizens-united-report-1482436) between competing camps that ostensibly back the same candidates, and feed terrible [inefficiencies](https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/09/opinion/hasen-super-pacs/index.html). They can [create their own](https://campaignlegal.org/update/super-pacs-cant-coordinate-candidates-heres-what-happened-when-one-did) legal woes. If done poorly—as is commonly the case—the super PAC builds a shadow campaign in duplicate. Because super PACs have unchecked ability to raise money, they often have far more lax checks on spending. To sketch a specific case for the uninitiated, that consultant’s $25,000 bill can be covered by one super PAC call to a sugar daddy while a campaign would have to find eight brand new donors who haven’t opened their checkbooks and are willing to max-out their contributions, right? In practice, it gets even tougher. The donors who max-out with $3,300 checks to candidates are rare; roughly [two-thirds](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/biden-re-elect-new-test-record-breaking-small-dollar-operation-rcna80897) of Biden’s fundraising in 2020 [came](https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/presidential-map/) in increments under $200, while less than one-fifth came in chunks of $2,000 or more. It seems a lot easier for a candidate’s loose orbit to collect checks in huge sums, but there are huge complications incumbent in that system once the money comes across the table. All of this, of course, is limited to the official super PAC spending. In campaign finance circles, so-called “dark money” groups also are operating. Unlike super PACs, which have to disclose their donors in regular reports to the Federal Elections Commission, the “dark money” operators are technically organized under the tax code as social-service or nonprofit groups that can hide their patrons. A must-read New York Times [analysis](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/us/politics/democrats-dark-money-donors.html) of the top 15 Democratic-aligned nonprofits spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 to the $900 million unleashed by the top 15 GOP-aligned nonprofits. (For the sake of a comparison, Biden’s official effort that year raised $1 billion and Trump pulled in $810 million. The median household [income](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-incomes-were-flat-last-year-census-figures-show-11663079099) last year was about $71,000.) Yes, these are absolutely insane sums of money in politics. In a time not that long ago, general election campaigns ran on a public financing system that ensured ideas, not checkbooks, fueled the presidential campaigns. George W. Bush and John Kerry each had about $150 million in public financing to [run](https://www.opensecrets.org/pres04/#) their post-nominating convention march to Election Day 2004. Fast-forward a little more than a decade. The pro-Jeb Bush super PAC Right to Rise wrangled $118 million and spent $87 million on advertising—a line-item that was almost triple the official campaign’s total budget. And yet, it turns out, for all the hyping of the super PAC strategy, it didn’t matter. Bush finished [sixth](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/primaries/iowa) in lead-off Iowa, ended up [fourth](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/primaries/new-hampshire) in [New Hampshire](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/primaries/new-hampshire) and [South Carolina](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/primaries/south-carolina) alike, and flew home from Columbia, S.C., as a [former](https://time.com/4231693/jeb-bush-ends-campaign-president/) candidate. Even Bush himself was frustrated with the super PAC’s work, [asking](https://twitter.com/jasonnobleIA/status/687337263651536896) a Des Moines _Register_ reporter trailing him for a day in January 2016 who was behind billboards publishing Bush’s own words. “What the hell is that?” he asked. “Is that Right to Rise?” As the campaign got closer to counting voting, the pro-Bush donors were in open [revolt](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/politics/jeb-bush-right-to-rise-super-pac.html) about the efficacy of spending, including a 15-minute [documentary](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/03/bush-super-pac-to-tell-jebs-story-in-15-minute-documentary/) on New England Sports Network that seemed more suited for Pyongyang than Portsmouth, N.H. Outside his events, you could differentiate the campaign signs from those planted by the Super PAC by punctuation: the ones with _Jeb_ branding were from the super PAC, and the ones with _Jeb!_ came from the campaign. Bush didn’t seem fully comfortable with the super PAC by the end. “It’s a weird system where you’re, you know, you can’t have any coordination,” he [said](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/16/prominent-jeb-bush-donor-questions-how-bush-aligned-super-pac-spends-its-money/). As I chased Bush around the fields of Iowa, the wedding halls of New Hampshire, and the convention centers of South Carolina, it was like watching a candidate that seemed unable to look around and see Trump had changed the rules, perhaps permanently and most likely not for good. Writing from his extremely deflated—and, as time marched on, increasingly drunk—campaign headquarters on the night he ended a White House march plotted for years, I [posited](https://time.com/4231693/jeb-bush-ends-campaign-president/) that Bush’s problem was he was running in “a year that saw bluster overtake substance, and Bush refused to shift.” He was merely an early canary in the coal mine that America would become. “You cannot insult your way to the presidency,” Bush repeated time and again. He believed it. Well, it turns out Trump could. He did. And no one has proven that his [talent](https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/who-killed-jeb-bushs-campaign-jeb-did) for cruelty has abated—or that [any](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/politics/jeb-bush-right-to-rise-super-pac.html) amount of money on its own can dent his standing, be it from a donor to a candidate or a super PAC. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6284300/desantis-pence-christie-2024-jeb-bush-super-pacs/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6284300/desantis-pence-christie-2024-jeb-bush-super-pacs/"},"headline":"Why Some 2024 Hopefuls Should Have a Talk With Jeb Bush","datePublished":"2023-06-02T11:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:58:22.213Z","description":"As Mike Pence and Chris Christie join Ron DeSantis in the race, none went to end up the Jeb! of 2024. Yet all are organizing their campaigns like Bush did in one crucial way.","url":"https://time.com/6284300/desantis-pence-christie-2024-jeb-bush-super-pacs/","keywords":["The D.C. 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