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Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush officially exploring White House bid
Bush to establish leadership pack and begin traveling the country in January
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
MIAMI (CFP) — Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will “actively explore” the possibility of seeking the White House in 2016 — the clearest indication yet that he will try to follow his father and brother into the Oval Office.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush
In an announcement posted on his Facebook page December 16, Bush said he decided to explore a Republican presidential bid after talking about it with his family over Thanksgiving.
“As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs, I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for president of the United States,” Bush said.
He also said he would establish a leadership PAC in January “that will help me facilitate conservations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical challenges facing our exceptional nation.”
Bush, 61, served as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is the son of former President George H.W. Bush and the brother of former President George W. Bush.
He had been mentioned as a possible GOP presidential contender in both 2008 and 2012 but opted out of both of those races.
Should he run, Bush will face what’s likely to be a crowded Republican field, with possibly five other Southerners in the mix.
Among the potential Southern GOP candidates are U.S. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida; and Governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas.
On the Democratic side, former U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has already launched an exploratory committee for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — a race that’s expected to be dominated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former first lady of Arkansas.
Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb opens presidential exploratory committee
Virginian is the first Democrat to make a move toward a nomination fight with Hillary Clinton
By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
BURKE, Virginia (CFP) — Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb has launched an exploratory committee for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — a race that’s expected to be dominated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb
“We desperately need to fix our country and to reinforce the values that have sustained us, many of which have fallen by the wayside in the nasty debates of the last several years,” Webb said in an open letter published on his committee’s website.
“I look forward to listening and talking with more people in the coming months as I decide whether or not to run.”
Webb is the first Southerner in either party to make a move toward a presidential bid. However, at least six Southern Republicans are considering running, including U.S. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida; Governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas; and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Webb, 68, served as a Marine combat officer in Vietnam and was navy secretary during the Reagan administration. In 2006, he ran for the U.S. Senate and rode that year’s Democratic wave to a victory incumbent GOP U.S. Senator George Allen, which gave Democrats control over the upper chamber.
However, he opted not to seek re-election in 2012 after serving a single term.
While Webb was considered a Democratic moderate in the Senate, his exploratory committee announcement hinted that he may be planning to run against Clinton as an economic populist, noting that “the disparities between those at the very top and the rest of our society have only grown larger since the economic crash of late 2008 and early 2009.”
Webb also acknowledged that he faces “what many commentators see as nearly impossible odds” in securing the Democratic nomination.
“We are starting with very little funding and no full-time staff, but I’ve been here before,” he said. “In February 2006, I announced for the Senate only nine months before the election against an entrenched incumbent. We had no money and no staff. We were more than 30 points behind in the polls.”
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to decide on White House bid in first half of 2015
Jindal would be the first Indian-American to pursue the presidency
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
BATON ROUGE (CFP) — Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is “praying” about whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and will make a final decision in the first half of next year.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal
“I haven’t made that decision,” Jindal said in a interview with NBC’s Meet The Press on November 16. “If I were to run for president, it’s because I believe in our country. The American dream is at jeopardy.”
“This president has defined the American dream as more dependence on the government. We need to restore the American dream, so it’s more about opportunity and growth and not redistribution.”
Jindal, 43, is in his second term as governor. Prior to being elected, he served in the U.S. House and was an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the administration of George W. Bush.
If he runs for the White House, Jindal would be the first Indian-American to pursue the office. No Louisianan has won the presidency since Zachary Taylor in 1848.
Jindal is one of a slew of potential Southern Republican presidential candidates in 2016, a list that includes U.S. Senators Rand Paul of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas; Texas Governor Rick Perry; and former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida.
Defiant Texas Governor Rick Perry vows to fight indictment
Perry insists he was standing up for the rule of law when he vetoed funding for a local prosecutor jailed for drunken driving
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
AUSTIN, Texas (CFP) — With a defiant and determined tone, Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry is vowing to fight his indictment on two felony charges stemming from his veto of a funding bill for an Austin prosecutor who refused his demand that she resign after being arrested for drunken driving.
Texas Governor Rick Perry
“I stood up for the rule of law in the state of Texas, and if I had to do it again, I would make the exact same decision,” Perry said in an interview with Fox News Sunday on August 17. “This is not the way that we settle … political differences in this country. You don’t do it with indictments. We settle our political differences at the ballot box.”
A grand jury in Travis County, which includes Austin, indicted Perry on felony charges of abuse of power and coercion stemming from his veto of $7.5 million in funding for a public integrity unit in the office of Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg. If convicted, he could face prison time.
In April 2013, Lehmberg, a Democrat, was arrested for driving with a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit, and video showed her being combative with the arresting officers. She pleaded guilty and served 20 days in jail.
Perry demanded the Lehmberg resign and threatened to veto funding for the public integrity unit — which investigates elected officials across Texas — if she refused to go. When Lehmberg refused to resign, Perry vetoed the funding.
“I had lost confidence in her. The public had lost confidence in her. And I did what every governor has done for decades, which is make a decision on whether or not it was in the proper use of state money to go to that agency,” Perry told Fox News Sunday.
Many Republicans in Texas, including Perry, have long been critical of the public integrity unit, saying it empowers Democratic prosecutors elected in Democrat-leaning Travis County to launch politically motivated investigations of Republicans.
A Republican judge appointed a special prosecutor, San Antonio attorney Mike McCrum, to investigate the circumstances of Perry’s veto after a complaint was filed by a liberal advocacy group.
Early in the Obama administration, McCrum had been considered for an appointment as a federal prosecutor, with the backing of Texas’s two GOP senators. But he withdrew his name in 2010 after the appointment stalled in the Senate.
Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, is not running for re-election this year. But he is considering making a bid for the White House in 2016, after making an unsuccessful presidential run in 2012.
Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst crushed in GOP primary runoff
State Senator Dan Patrick ends Dewhurst’s bid for a fourth term
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
HOUSTON (CFP) — Two years after losing a U.S. Senate primary to Tea Party insurgent Ted Cruz, Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has lost his bid for a fourth term to another Tea Party-backed candidate.
Texas State Senator Dan Patrick
State Senator Dan Patrick of Cypress took 65 percent in the May 27 Republican runoff. Dewhurst trailed with just 35 percent.
Patrick will now face Democratic State Senator Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio in November’s general election.
Patrick, 64, a conservative radio talk show host who represents a Houston-area district in the Texas Senate, had finished well ahead of Dewhurst in the first round of voting back in March. But Dewhurst poured $5 million from his own personal fortune into the runoff campaign to try to make up the difference.
Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst
Dewhurst, 68, from Houston, was first elected lieutenant governor in 2002, after serving a term as state land commissioner. In 2012, he was the prohibitive favorite in the U.S. Senate primary, with the backing of Governor Rick Perry and the GOP establishment. Then, Cruz came out of nowhere to beat him in a runoff.
Patrick criticized Dewhurst for being part of the Austin establishment and also hit him for supporting in-state college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. Dewhurst’s campaign went personal, making Patrick’s 1987 bankruptcy and his legal name change issues in the race.
Dewhurst claimed Patrick changed his name to avoid his debts. But Patrick insisted that he changed his given last name — Goeb — to Patrick because he had already been using the new name in his work as a media personality.
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