Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in the midst of a swing through Europe, downplayed the significance of early polls on Wednesday and defended the recent move to tap GOP strategist Danny Diaz to manage his anticipated presidential campaign over former Mitt Romney campaign staffer David Kochel.
“I don’t read the polls,” he told reporters outside the Pestana Hotel in Berlin, NBC News reported. “It’s fun to see them when you’re winning, not so fun when you’re not. Doesn’t really matter, though, it’s June for crying out loud, so we got a long way to go.”
Mr. Bush is scheduled to make an announcement on his 2016 plans Monday after he returns from the trip to Germany, Poland, and Estonia, and he said he was confident in the team he’s putting in place.
“You have a real focus on four states in February then you have an avalanche of states after that, and you think about how to organize all that, how to develop the messaging part of this, the scheduling part of it, it’s a pretty overwhelming challenge, and so I decided to kind of split up the duties,” Mr. Bush said. “David has got great success in these early states, particularly Iowa, he’s also got a great strategic mind, and Danny’s a grinder.”
He added that he was “confident that the team in place will do their job, and I got to do my job as well.”
“It’s a long haul,” Mr. Bush said. “You start whenever you start, and you end a long way away from where we are today. So I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this. I mean, you all cover this kind of in the here and now and who’s winning and who’s losing is important, and I respect that, but if you have a strategy and you think about it over the long haul is the better approach, at least for me.”
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“And so I’m pretty confident that we’re in a good position, for sure,” he said. “And I’m going to compete everywhere. If I’m a candidate, there’s no fifth place kind of mentality in my mind.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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