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John Ellis Bush (born February 11, 1953), commonly known as "Jeb Bush", is the 43rd and current Governor of Florida.
Early years
Jeb Bush was born in Midland, Texas where his father was running an oil drilling company. He has been known by his initials JEB, since childhood. When he was six years old, the family moved to Houston, Texas. He was a childhood athlete enjoying baseball and tennis. He went to a public elementary school, but later transferred to a private school. When he was in eighth grade, his father won a seat in Congress and moved to Washington, DC. Jeb stayed in Houston with another family and finished the school year there.
High school and college years
He then enrolled in Andover, an elite private high school in Massachusetts. He described his time there as "a cynical little turd in a cynical little school". He admitted to squealing tires and smoking marijuana, while a student there. When he was seventeen, he went to León, Mexico, as part of a student exchange program. While attending a motorcycle race, he met a local girl named Columba Garnica Gallo. They married three years later. Jeb Bush now speaks English and Spanish fluently.
He attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in Latin American Affairs in 1973, taking only two and a half years. He registered for the draft, but the Vietnam War ended before his number came up.
Marries, works as a banker
After graduating, he married Columba Garnica Gallo in 1974. They now have three children, George P., Noelle and John E. "Jeb", Jr. He then went to work for Texas Commerce Bank, which was partly owned by his father's friend and the future United States Secretary of State, James Baker. His starting salary was about $8,000 a year. In November 1977, he was sent to to Caracas to open a bank branch. He spent about two years there, working in international finance. He returned to the United States to work on his father's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980. His father ultimately lost, but was nominated and elected as the vice-president.
Enters Miami real estate
Following the election, Jeb Bush and his family moved to Dade County, Florida outside of Miami. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, then a 32 year old Cuban immigrant. Codina had made millions in a computer business and just formed IntrAmerica Investments Inc. to pursue opportunities in real estate. Codina paid Bush $41,508 in 1981. However, Bush soon became a valuable salesman for Codina and made a lot of money on commissions. His name and connections to his father, the vice-president, opened doors to important clients.
In his years in Miami, he was involved in a number of business dealings including a mobile phone company, he served on the board of a Norwegian-owned company that sold fire equipment to the Alaska oil pipeline, he was a minority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, he bought a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and a scheme to sell water pumps in Nigeria.
Enters Florida politics
He got his start in Florida politics as the Chairman of the Dade County Republican Party. Dade County played an important role in the 1986 election of Bob Martinez to the Governor's office. In return, Martinez appointed Bush as Florida's Secretary of Commerce. He served in that role in 1987 and 1988, before resigning once again to work on his father's presidential campaign.
After his father was elected President, Bush's real estate development company took off. He and Cordina changed the name to Cordina-Bush and it became one of South Florida's leading real estate development firms. Bush got 40% of the profits of the firm. But in June 1993, Jeb sold his share of the company Codina for over one million dollars. He sold it to run for office.
Runs for Florida governor
He launched an unsuccessful bid for the Governor's Office in 1994 against incumbent Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles. In 1998, he defeated Democratic opponent Buddy MacKay (55% to 45%) to become Governor, after courting moderate voters and Hispanics. Simultaneously, his brother George W. Bush won a landslide reelection victory for a second term as Governor of Texas, and the Bush brothers became the first siblings to govern two states at the same time since Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller governed New York and Arkansas from 1967 to 1971.
Jeb Bush was re-elected in November 2002, becoming the first Republican in the state's history to be re-elected as Governor. He defeated Democrat Bill McBride by a slightly greater margin than in 1998 (56% to 44%). He was active in the Project for the New American Century whose goal is to promote American global leadership.
Bush family
He is the younger brother of President George W. Bush, older brother of Neil Bush, and second son of former President George H. W. Bush. The Bush political family has been heavily involved with high level politics. This has been likened to aristocratic conditions, which has created the George Bush family conspiracy theory and the prediction of the Bush dynasty.
Political future
Jeb Bush is widely considered to be a rising star of the Republican Party; there was some speculation that he might run for President himself in 2008. However, on October 17, 2004 he officially took himself out of the running in the 2008 election. He is seen as extremely popular among Cubans in Florida (winning 80% of the Cuban vote in 2002), and moderately popular among non-Cuban Hispanics (56% in 2002, equaling the 56% he won statewide).
Controversy
Jeb Bush's business dealings have attracted controversy. An October 2002 report in the Miami Herald details Bush's involvement in a questionable Nigerian deal, where money was allegedly used to bribe government officials for approval of a $74 million water pump sale that was mostly finance by US foreign aid.
There have also been claims of political hypocrisy. Jeb Bush's daughter Noelle Bush was sent into rehabilitation for her drug use, while Jeb Bush simultaneously called for harsh punishment of nonviolent drug offenders (and actively opposed a ballot initiative that would send them into treatment instead).
References
- Jeb Bush: The Son Rises Away from Dad's Shadow, by Sydney P. Freedberg, The Miami Herald, August 15, 1994.
- Bush and business: Fast success, brushes with mystery. By Andres Viglucci and Alfonso Chardy, The Miami Herald, Oct 5 2002. Describes the Nigeria deal and other business activities by Jeb Bush.
- Jeb Bush's secret weapon. Salon.com article by Greg Palast about inaccurate voter "purge" lists. (Requires subscription.)
- . Article on so-called "price gouging" following hurricane Charley, from the Seatle Post-Intelligencer, August 19 2004
- The latest Bush hypocrisy. Salon.com editorial by Arianna Huffington. "Gov. Jeb Bush calls for jail time for nonviolent drug offenders as his daughter gets sent to rehab."
| Preceded by: Kenneth H. "Buddy" MacKay, Jr. |
Governors of Florida | Incumbent |