About 500 turn out for SC town hall meeting with Jeb Bush

“I have no feeling for the electorate anymore”, said John H. Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor who helped the elder Bush win the 1988 primary there and went on to serve as his White House chief of staff. “It is not responding the way it used to”.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is drastically slashing campaign spending, including an across-the-board pay cut for staff, as the one-time front-runner seeks to salvage his bid for his party’s nomination. Also, half of the staff at headquarters is getting split up and offered new jobs in a new state.

The overhaul the campaign announced Friday aims to boost those numbers.

The move has heightened chatter in GOP circles that the former Florida governor’s run is faltering after being an early nomination favorite.

Bush is unlikely to be next, as he pulled in more than $13 million in fundraising last quarter.

Bush has said his campaign is making an especially intense effort in New Hampshire, site of the race’s first primary on February 9.

Jeb Bush has been having a rough couple of days. And, a Republican operative raising money for the Bush campaign told the Examiner that he hasn’t encountered problems filling his events or meeting his money goals. Depending on how next week’s Republican debate goes, Bush could very well hang on until primary voting begins in January. “As a donor, I am thrilled to see the campaign focus the lion’s share of resources on voter contact and this will redirect energy to early states”, one Jeb bundler told Reuters. His midyear report to the FEC showed a record $103 million raised for his super-PAC Right to Rise, which is not allowed to coordinate with the Bush campaign but can spend unlimited money on the candidate’s behalf.

A quarter of its staff will remain in the Miami office, while 25% is already based in the states. Bush has had many policy rollouts and has a strong campaign infrastructural presence in critical states, but he has yet to connect in the ways that Trump, or even other outsider candidates like Carson and Carly Fiorina, have.

“We made an adjustment in our campaign, that’s what leaders do”, Bush said Saturday while campaigning in Charleston, South Carolina.

Bush is trying to underscore the seriousness of his campaign, as compared with Trump.

This is a little bit surprising, but you know a lot of his money, of course, was super-PAC money as opposed to campaign money, Carson said in an interview that will air on With All Due Respect today on Bloomberg TV.

The Bush campaign’s cost-cutting was an issue discussed among Bush’s wealthy backers at the California fundraisers, but the donor who attended said in his view, these cuts were not as awful as the media were making it out to be. Scott was accompanied by U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy and both of them took turns asking Bush questions from the audience members, ranging from how Bush would deal with the terror group ISIS, to what he would do about changing how education works in the country.

So what does the announcement mean for Mr Bush’s campaign? Marco Rubio has been gaining in the polls, often edging out Bush – increasing frustration not only among a few of Bush’s network of donors, but also longtime Florida supporters.