Posted on 11/24/2015 8:58:20 AM PST by longtermmemmory
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, his face contorted in a scowl, doesnât get up to greet Alex Villalobos when the big-eyed 42-year-old state senator enters the dimly lit office connected to the executive suite of Tallahasseeâs Capitol building.
Itâs early May 2006, shortly after the last day of the legislative session, and Villalobos is seething. Heâs recently been banished from party leadership and his oak-lined office in the Capitol â largely because he voted against the governorâs pet project: making school vouchers part of the state constitution and doing away with a law that limits class sizes in the stateâs schools.
âYou see we mean business,â Bush says, jabbing his index finger into the desk. âThis is important for the party. It is important for the country.â
âHow is packing little children into classrooms in my district important for the country?â Villalobos retorts, locking eyes with the governor.
Ignoring the question, Bush says, âYou can get it all back. All you have to do is change your vote.â
âIâm not changing my vote,â Villalobos replies.
âWell, Iâm going to run a candidate against you,â Bush hisses. âAnd youâre going to lose.â
âIâd rather lose,â Villalobos fires back before turning around and walking out. Thatâs how Villalobos, now out of elective politics, remembers the last time he and Bush spoke. âIt was very unpleasant,â he says. âHe was never my boss... but he acted like he was.â
Bush followed through on his threat, propping up a ringer candidate whose campaign received $6 million from well-heeled âJeb!â donors. But Villalobos squeaked out a win in that race and continued in the state Senate another four years before moving into private practice as a lawyer and political consultant.
New Times is revisiting the ex-governorâs falling-out with Villalobos, as well as other instances in which Bush retaliated against his enemies. Itâs an ugly side of Jeb that has more recently popped up in everything from Twitter beefs with Donald Trump to attacks on his onetime protégé, Marco Rubio. Thereâs a petty vindictiveness that his sagging presidential campaign wants voters to forget as he tries to convince conservative voters across America that heâs not a stiff.
Via email, Bush campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell acknowledged receiving New Timesâ list of questions for her boss. However, she did not provide any answers after repeated followup requests for comment.
âJeb builds consensus only when you agree with him 100 percent of the time,â Villalobos says. âWe live in America. He needs to respect othersâ points of view whether he likes them or not.â
One summer afternoon in 1992, more than a decade before that confrontation in the capital, Alex Villalobos walked into the marble-tiled lobby of the swanky Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables. He was there to meet the most important Republican in Florida, Jeb Bush.
At the time, Villalobos was a 28-year-old private attorney who had spent his first years out of law school working as a state prosecutor. And he had his sights set on a newly drawn state House seat. He had recently changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican â and a family friend had set up the meeting. During their powwow, Villalobos showed Bush his blank petition to gather signatures from Republican voters to get on the ballot.
Bush, then Florida chairman for his father President George H.W. Bushâs reelection campaign, quickly agreed to be the first Republican to sign his petition. âI was surprised,â Villalobos says, reflecting on the 23-year-old memory. âHere I am a Republican for only two weeks, and he is welcoming me with open arms.â
Indeed, Villalobos seemed destined for life as a Democrat. Born in Miami in 1963, he has political roots that date back four generations. His great-grandfather, Plutarco Villalobos, served as Cubaâs treasurer in the 1930s. His grandfather, José âLoloâ Villalobos, was mayor of Guanabacoa, Cuba, for 22 years, beginning in 1940.
In the late â70s and â80s, a decade after Lolo and his family had arrived in Miami, Villalobosâ grandfather worked as an assistant to then-Miami Mayor Maurice Ferré, a Democrat. A few years later, Lolo held a similar job with another Democrat, Metro-Dade Commissioner Bruce Kaplan. Villalobosâ dad, also named José, is a well-regarded Miami attorney who led Democratic Party voter registration drives in the â80s. One of his closest friends is former Florida Gov. and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham.
Alex followed in their footsteps, says his dad, José. He says his son was a very serious boy growing up. âIn elementary school, he was student council president. In high school, he insisted on getting a job so he could pay for his own gas and car insurance.â
After graduating from Coral Park Senior High, Alex earned a bachelorâs degree in political science from the University of Miami. During his college years from 1982 to 1985, he worked as an aide in the Miami office of Lawton Chiles, at the time a U.S. senator. The relationship became friendly. Chiles was among the guests when Villalobos married his wife, Barbara, in Miami in May 1985.
For the next four years, Villalobos lived in Tallahassee, where he earned his law degree from Florida State University and subsequently took a job as an assistant state attorney. He returned to Miami in 1989 and worked for Chilesâ gubernatorial campaign (Chiles defeated incumbent Bob Martinez) before deciding he was ready to run for state representative.
But Miami-Dade Democratic Party leaders rejected him. âThey told me: âWe love you, your parents, and your granddad, but you are not next in line,â â Villalobos recalls. âThey said, âYou gotta wait your turn.â â
The following day, he became a Republican. Villalobos says the move didnât require much soul-searching. âI wanted to run,â he says. âI didnât want to wait.â
José Villalobos says he had no problem with his sonâs decision. âI was impressed that he had the courage to tell me he was going to run as a Republican. He was demonstrating his own identity.â
After Jeb and many others signed his election petition, Villalobos beat Esteban Bovo (who would later be elected Miami- Dade County commissioner) in the 1992 primary. He didnât have a Democratic opponent, so he was soon on his way back to Tallahassee, this time as a state legislator.
Among his first friends was freshman state Rep. Lesley âLesâ Miller Jr., a Democrat from St. Petersburg. âDemocrats controlled the House, but you didnât have any bitterness between the two parties,â recalls Miller, who left the Legislature in 2006 and is now a Hillsborough County commissioner. âAlex and I had a great relationship.â
Villalobos says then-state House Republican James King, who became a mentor, gave him and other freshmen advice that stuck: âJim told us we would never be asked to vote against our district.â
In 2000, Villalobos moved into the more exclusive state Senate, where he represented Kendall, Pinecrest, and surrounding areas. During his first five runs, which encompassed 14 years in the House and Senate, Villalobos never drew a challenger. He was a popular moderate. During his 1996, 2000, 2002, and 2006 campaigns, he raised a total of $1 million, according to Florida campaign finance records. The most he ever garnered in a single campaign was $653,171 in 2006, the year Bush came gunning for him.
In 1996, he sponsored the Jimmy Ryce Act, cracking down on sexual predators, and in 2001, he proposed giving inmates access to DNA tests to prove their innocence, which has resulted in cases against wrongly convicted Floridians being overturned. Bush signed both measures into law.
Villalobos crossed the party divide, says Steve Geller, a Democratic state representative and senator from 1998 to 2008. âAlex is a really smart, moderate guy,â he says. âHe always wanted to protect the power and authority of the Senate, as opposed to someone who would just roll over for the governor.â
A dozen television and newspaper journalists crammed into the reception area of Lt. Gov. Frank Broganâs office in Tallahasseeâs new Capitol building. State Sen. Kendrick Meek from Miami and Rep. Tony Hill from Jacksonville had stationed themselves on a striped sofa and refused to leave.
On January 18, 2000, one year into Jeb Bushâs first term, the Democratic African- American legislators took a stand against the governorâs One Florida initiative, a bold move eliminating affirmative action in state hiring, contracts, and university admissions. The 20 members of the Legislatureâs black caucus were outraged that Bush hadnât consulted them before issuing his November executive order.
Meek and Hill occupied Broganâs office overnight, refusing to leave until the governor met their demands to end One Florida.
Annoyed by the unwanted media attention, Floridaâs Republican head honcho was caught on camera lashing out at reporters and his staff. According to a Miami Herald account of the incident, the video showed Bush admonishing his press spokesman, Justin Sayfie: âYour lifeâs gonna be a living hell. Kick their asses out.â
Bush told gathered reporters that Meek and Hill would not change his mind: âWeâre doing the peopleâs work, and Iâm not going to let anybody, for any reason, stop us from doing that.â
More than 100 demonstrators, including white and black Democratic legislators, stood vigil outside the governorâs office while Meek and Hill were inside. Twenty-four hours later, the pair ended their sit-in when Bush agreed to hold public hearings to gather input and recommendations before the state Board of Regents voted on key parts of the university portion of One Florida.
The sit-in provided an early glimpse into Bushâs volatile temper and uncooperative governing style, says Les Miller, the Hillsborough County Democrat who was part of Villalobosâ freshman class. âItâs his way or no way,â Miller recalls. âHis retaliation always came during the budgetary process. If you were a Democrat and black, you can bet your bottom dollar he was going to veto anything you put in the budget.â
For instance, Bush killed $500,000 that Miller had requested in 2000 for a job-training program for underprivileged residents of Sarasota, Polk, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Manatee counties. The governor also vetoed $200,000 that Miller requested for a health clinic serving impoverished rural residents in Manatee and for an Alzheimerâs facility in Ybor City.
âThere was no rhyme or reason for it other than [the requests were] coming from Democrats who went against him on One Florida... the voucher system, and small class size,â Miller says. âWe opposed him, and he retaliated against us.â
Bush was equally dismissive of dissenting Republicans. Consider the case of Nancy Argenziano, a former state representative and senator from Crystal River (who left the GOP in 2011). In 2003, Argenziano, along with 11 other Republicans, voted against a bill that gave Bush the power to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, a St. Petersburg woman with irreparable brain damage whose husband, Michael, had fought for seven years to take her off life support. The bill nevertheless passed into law, and Bush ordered Schiavoâs feeding tube reinserted, keeping her alive for close to another two years. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately struck down the law as unconstitutional.
âThere were times he raised his voice at me,â Argenziano says. âI raised my voice right back at him. I once asked him if he ever got tired of people telling him yes all the time.â
In 2006, Argenziano again drew Bushâs ire when she publicly admonished him for urging Republican constituents to ask state senators to support a bill that dramatically limited damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. âAnybody on the inside knew Jeb had a temperament that could be vindictive,â Argenziano says. âIf you didnât agree with Jeb, you were on his shit list.â
An undertone of this animosity surfaced in an email Bush sent to Argenziano in May 2006 when she inquired about $50,000 he vetoed for a Citrus County organization that teaches blind people to build furniture. When she claimed a Bush staffer said her sponsorship of the bill would make it less likely he would rescind the veto, the governor responded, âThe fact that you sponsored the line item wonât matter to me. None of your comments in the press will matter. None of your votes will matter.â
Now retired from politics, Argenziano says she doesnât hold any grudges against Bush. She even compliments him: âOf all the Republican candidates, he is the most intelligent.
He is really the cream of that crop.â Itâs Bushâs abrasive personality that gets in his way, she says. âWhen I vote for president, I donât want someone who is going to throw a tantrum when it doesnât go his way. His vindictiveness and his temperament are his pitfalls.â
During the 2005 legislative session, Bush began having doubts about Villalobosâ loyalty to the party that had paved the state senatorâs political path. After all, it was Bush who placed the first signature on Villalobosâ petition to get on the ballot 13 years earlier. Now Villalobos had risen to the rank of Senate majority leader and had gathered enough pledge cards from his colleagues to become that chamberâs president in 2008.
Bush was on a mission to undo a 2002 constitutional amendment limiting the number of students in a public school classroom to 28. Though the measure had been overwhelmingly approved by state voters, Bush wanted it gone.âHe was like, âWe canât afford it, the sky is going to fall, and the state is going to sink,â â Villalobos recalls. âWhen the session started, Jeb told us: âWeâre going to undo it.â â
Villalobos refused to go along. For one, his wife is a public-school teacher. Second, a majority of voters in his district had cast ballots in favor of the small-class amendment. âI am the man I am today because of public school education,â he says. âWhy we have to pick on teachers is something no one has ever explained to me.â
Bush requested the House and Senate put a measure on the 2006 ballot to repeal the mandate. In the months leading up to the Senateâs vote, Bush badgered Villalobos. During one conversation, Villalobos recollects, he asked the governor how placing 50 kids in a classroom was better than limiting the number to 28. âConservative principles,â Bush allegedly replied. âYou are the majority leader. You have to vote with me.â
Villalobos said he reminded Bush that he lived in Miami, where most of the overcrowding occurs. âYeah, but I represent the entire state,â the governor allegedly said.
âWell, I represent Kendall, where voters want the small-class-size amendment,â Villalobos said. âAnd Jim King once told me I would never have to vote against my district.â
He and Bush went back and forth several times on the issue, Villalobos says. âHe kept telling me that I didnât understand,â Villalobos remembers. âJeb told me that I had to vote his way.â
In early May 2005, Villalobos voted against putting the repeal on the ballot. He was the swing vote. The measure died.
As revenge, Villalobos contends, Bush vetoed nearly $1 million for spinal cord research at the University of Miami, which the senator had championed. Instead, the governor granted the project only $500,000. Bush slashed the funding even though he had included the money in the proposed budget at the beginning of the session. In prior years, he had authorized nearly $4 million for UMâs spinal cord research.
Villalobos said Bush didnât have a valid reason for cutting the funds.
Bush denied the vetoes were retaliation, asserting the projects were not vetted by state agencies and did not meet a statewide goal. âWe strive to make this process out of principle,ââ Bush told the Miami Herald. âThereâs nothing punitive to what we do.ââ
Later that summer, Villalobos traveled to New York City to attend a state Senate fundraiser. George Steinbrenner, then owner of the New York Yankees, hosted the fete in his Yankee Stadium suite.
At the party, Ken Pruitt, a Fort Pierce Republican who at the time chaired the Senate rules committee, pulled aside Villalobos, who remembers the conversation this way: âThe governor is really mad at you,â Pruitt said. âYou took on the governor, and nobody has beaten him.â
âI donât look at it as I beat the governor,â Villalobos replied.
âWell, that is how he looks at it,â said Pruitt, who left office in 2009. He did not respond to three phone messages over one week, as well as an emailed list of questions, seeking comment for this story.
A few minutes later, Jim King, the outgoing Senate president, approached Villalobos. King, who passed away in 2009, issued another warning: âAlex, you are David, and he is Goliath. You should think about changing your vote.â
âJim, what happened to âDonât vote against your district?â â Villalobos shot back. âYouâre the one who told me that.â
âThe governor is very vindictive,â King replied. âHe doesnât like to lose.â
âI said, âWhat can he do to me?â â Villalobos recalls. âFamous last words.â
Fast-forward to the final days of the 2006 legislative session, when both state bodies were considering the vote on repeal of the class-size amendment as well as making school vouchers part of the state constitution.
Villalobos, who opposed both measures, says Bush called him into a face-to-face meeting. He doesnât remember specifics, only that it didnât end well. âUnless you change the funding formula to make it fair for Miami- Dade, I am not voting against my district,â Villalobos recalls telling Bush. âHe had a conniption. We exchanged words.â
On April 29, 2006, Villalobos and five moderate Republicans teamed up with Senate Democrats to defeat the class-size amendment vote. A few days later, Villalobos was in the Senate chamber for the scheduled vote on the vouchers when Senate President Tom Lee, a Bush acolyte who rarely questioned the governor, called Villalobos to the front.
âThe governor is on the phone,â Lee allegedly said. âHe wants to talk to you.â
Villalobos took the call in the Senate presidentâs stately office, which was connected to the Senate chamber. Lying next to the phone was a copy of Christine Todd Whitmanâs 2005 book, Itâs My Party Too. Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 whose memoir warns about her party being hijacked by right-wing fundamentalists.
âI thought, This has got to be an omen,â Villalobos says. âWe had a very animated conversation. He yelled at me and said I was going to regret my decision. I actually hung up on
When he returned to the Senate floor, Villalobos voted no.
âI donât know why you did this,â Lee allegedly told Villalobos. âThe governor is livid. This is going to be terrible for your career.â Like so many others, Lee repeatedly declined to comment about Villalobos. Leeâs spokeswoman, Jennifer Wilson, said he was too busy to answer questions.
The morning after the Senate vote against vouchers, Villalobos fished his office keys from his pants pocket to open the door. But the key didnât work. âI called up the sergeant at arms and asked him whatâs up,â Villalobos recalls. âHe apologized that he was just following orders and took me to my new office.â
The sergeant led him to another, much smaller room on the same floor. Unlike his majority leader suite, the new space didnât have a separate room for his legislative aide. But it had a broom closet. âIâm not going to put my aide there,â Villalobos said. âSo I took the closet. My desk was a little folding TV table.â
A few hours later, Bush told him he would run a candidate against him in the upcoming primary. Seeing Villalobos stripped of his majority leadership, ending his Senate presidency bid, and exiling him to the lower rungs of the Senate chamber wasnât enough. Running him out of elected office was Bushâs ultimate goal.
To do his dirty work, the governor enlisted Frank Bolaños â a BellSouth employee whom Bush had appointed to the Miami- Dade County School Board in 2001 â to run in the 2006 Republican primary. According to a May 2006 Tampa Bay Times article, Bush flew from Tallahassee to Miami to meet with Bolaños for a 30-minute powwow less than a week after the school board member announced he was running. Bushâs then-press secretary Alia Faraj told Times reporters that her bossâ get-together with Bolaños had nothing to do with the election. She claimed the two men were simply having a general conversation about âeducation.â
But Bush followed up the meeting by sending a fundraising letter in June to donors hailing Bolaños as âa conservative who believes in lower taxes and smaller governmentâ and âa true Republican we can trust.â He closed the missive by noting that his candidateâs opponent â whom Bush identified only as the âincumbentâ â had âabandoned our partyâs principles and lost his way.â
Bush, of course, was referring to Villalobos. âI was livid,â Villalobos says. âI couldnât believed I was being punished for voting against him once out of 99 times.â
Bolañosâ campaign raised more than $200,000 three weeks into his candidacy, compared to $80,000 Villalobos had collected in three months. The names on Bolañosâ finance committee read like a whoâs who of Bush apostles: real-estate developer Sergio Pino, former Florida Republican Party Chairman Al Cardenas, Fort Lauderdale cardiologist Zachariah Zachariah, and Jason Unger, a Tallahassee lobbyist whose wife had served as a Bush campaign manager in 2002.
Outside groups also bankrolled campaign attacks against Villalobos. Two of Pinoâs development firms gave $130,000 to the governorâs Foundation for Floridaâs Future, a nonprofit think tank that employed staffers from Bushâs 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial races. The foundation produced mailers depicting Villalobos morphing into Hillary Clinton and placing him side-by-side with serial killer Ted Bundy.
Bush-affiliated donors spent hundreds of thousands on TV ads to trash Villalobos. Bush himself appeared in most of them, telling voters in English and Spanish to go with Bolaños.
Then there was the guy in the chicken suit hired to harass Villalobos on the campaign trail after he failed to agree to a debate with Bolaños. Nicknamed âDemolobos,â the chicken mascot was reminiscent of a similar stunt Russians pulled during the campaign of President Boris Yeltsin. The name âDemolobosâ was a snarky way of portraying Villalobos as a closet Democrat.
âA bunch of people rushed the chicken because they thought they could get Pollo Tropical coupons,â Villalobos told the Miami Herald at the time.
Argenziano, one of the few Republicans who stuck by Villalobos, said Bush orchestrated a multimillion-dollar smear campaign to unseat Villalobos. âThey wanted to slash Alexâs throat,â she says.
It was the toughest test of character Villalobos had ever faced. âI just decided to campaign as hard as I could,â he says. âMy wife, daughter, and I spent the whole summer walking. The one good thing is it brought us closer together.â
On September 5, 2006, Villalobos eked out a win over his opponent by 426 votes. âWinning was very sweet,â he says.
Bush not only failed to defeat his nemesis but also lost some Republican voters who did not appreciate the onslaught. In thousands of emails Bush released prior to officially announcing his presidential bid in June, New Times found messages from constituents who denounced his involvement in Villalobosâ race.
The day after the primary election, Kendall resident Robert Mende wrote, âSad day for Florida Republicans that you tried to punish a fellow Republican just because he did not vote with you 100 percent. You took a swing and missed!â
Another message, from a Miami man named Alfonso, read, âMr. Jeb Bush... I find your actions very, very unprofessional, unethical, and certainly not one befitting a governor and brother of the US pres. You are the one dividing the Republican Party.â
Standing in the kitchen of his rustic house in Pinecrest, Villalobos whips up a couple of cups of café con leche, made the way his grandmother taught him. Dressed in a blue-and-pink checkered dress shirt and dark-gray slacks, he takes a seat at the kitchen table.
The first few months after the election, he recalls, he continued to stew. âI needed to put this behind me and move on,â he says. âI took on the attitude that I am supposed to be doing what the people who voted for me want me to do and not what a bunch of people in Tallahassee want.â
He said his last four years in office turned out to be the best of his political career. For starters, Jeb was no longer in the state capital after leaving office in November 2006. âWhen I got back to Tallahassee, there were people who worked for Jeb who patted me on the back,â Villalobos remembers. âThey told me: âGood job.â â
Before leaving in 2010 because of term limits, Villalobos chaired the judiciary and rules committees. Coincidentally, the candidate who won his vacated seat is Anitere Flores, a former state representative who briefly worked as Bushâs education policy chief.
After leaving office, Villalobos went into private law practice representing clients affected by pending bills during the legislative session. âI will determine what a bill is about,â he says. âI keep track of bills for different people and clients. I tell them what is in it, what is going on, and when it is up. I am effective by finding sneaky stuff and exposing it.â
Meanwhile, Bush is no longer the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Heâs been supplanted by Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and even his former protégé, Marco Rubio. In recent weeks, Bushâs campaign and his Right to Rise super PAC have ramped up the Rubio attacks.
On November 9, the New York Times reported that Mike Murphy, Right to Riseâs chief strategist, is willing to spend as much as $20 million of the super PACâs $108 million haul to tear down Rubio. Already, the group has cut a video that deems the U. S. senator unelectable as president because of his hard-line stance against abortion. Bush even publicly refused to shake Rubioâs hand during a recent debate.
Villalobos says Bush hasnât learned that all the money and name recognition in the world canât buy an election. Plus, Republican voters are tired of establishment candidates who donât listen to the people. âWhen you add up [the poll numbers for] Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina, you have more than 51 percent,â Villalobos says. âThe majority of Republicans are disgusted with the party. They want to see a different direction.â
This started out with me thinking he’s a “Bush”....then “he was Governor of Florida”.....then “he’s got Rove and the super PACs and beaucoup millions behind him”.
Then, he spoke Spanish everywhere he went. Talking bout Columba like he was Newt and Calista.....Then about giving all these illegals a free pass....
Now I just like to see how low in the polls this loser rings in at.
The Bush campaign is dead but this article, at least the office encounter part is fiction. ‘’jabbing his index finger’’, ‘’locking eyes’’.
I’m surprised Villalobos doesn’t claim Bush was eating the corpse of an infant while they talked.
Like I have said for awhile, Jeb is just a jerk.
Go away, Jebbie, no one likes you.
IOW both are jerks. I wonder if the author is a friend of Rubio.
But Miami-Dade Democratic Party leaders rejected him. They told me: "We love you, your parents, and your granddad, but you are not next in line," Villalobos recalls. They said, "You gotta wait your turn."
The following day, he became a Republican. Villalobos says the move didn't require much soul-searching. "I wanted to run, he says. I didn't want to wait."
Yeah, this guy sure seems like someone we can trust! /s This whole article reads like a sad attempt to paint ¡Yeb! as a conservative.
tl;dr
The author tries to portray Jeb as a dick. If he is, he's a dick WITHOUT a purpose.
How do you know. Were you there?
“The author tries to portray Jeb as a dick. If he is, he’s a dick WITHOUT a purpose.”
http://www.bing.com/search?q=my+special+purpose&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IESR02
That’s a stupid question.
If someone says they’ve talked to little green men I don’t have to have been there either to know bs when I hear it. Jeb is wrong on a bunch of stuff but I’m not going to buy any negative horsecrap I hear just because I don’t like the guy. Apparently you’re willing to swallow any horsecrap as long as the horse is crapping a direction you like.
Good Lord. This opus poses as an anti Jeb screed but was it intended to support Jeb because of his anti union position ? Because it is a screed it loses its effectiveness .
What the Alvarado piece in the digital Miami Times does.Is demonstrate the pettyness of Florida politicians and that so called; quote, republican moderates, unquote, are nothing more than quote; we can spend tax money better socialists, unquote .
Claiming they are opposition to those operating under the disguse as members of the so called and Godless democrat political party, but are actually democrat lite .
Jeb has some character and personality flaws, including a nasty, vindictive streak — but, to his credit, he also has performed private acts of kindness and generosity.
There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers. LOL.
He "heartlessly" refused to agree to liberal demands and asinine pork-barrel spending.
And when I read about the "class size" garbage I found myself nodding in agreement.
"Class size" has no correlation to outcomes. Nor does throwing taxpayer dollars down the teacher-union-sewer-complex.
Why Jeb hasn't promoted himself more, and laid off the pro-illegal immigrant BS is a mystery.
He could say: Look, I turned Florida around, cut taxes, improved the economy.
Under Obama, we have seen these decline... make a list, and go hard.
Jeb just plain sucks.
Probably the worst campaigner out there.
Spends all of his time attacking potential ALLIES, and groveling in front of people who will never vote for republicans.
Jeb Bush was a good governor and probably would make a good Cabinet Secretary in an upcoming Administration. I’ll probably put him on charge of the Commerce Department. Regarding his campaigning skills, he doesn’t seem to have the “touch” of his older brother Dubya.
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