![list of people running for president 2016 write ins list of people running for president 2016 write ins](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/12/02154133/PP_12.15.16_historyevents-00-08.png)
While having repeatedly said he would not run again, 2012 nominee Governor Mitt Romney told donors in early January 2015 that he was seriously considering another run. Widely seen as the 'establishment' candidate, Bush was expected to court and win donors who were central to the 2012 presidential election on the Republican side. While not formally a candidate, he was the first potential contender to make any major moves toward the beginning of the 2016 election cycle. On December 16, 2014, Bush announced the formation of The Right to Rise PAC, a Super PAC intended to serve as an exploratory committee and fundraising mechanism for a potential candidacy. Jeb Bush speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2015. It was further speculated that Bush had put off formally announcing a candidacy in order to raise unlimited amounts of money for his Right to Rise Super PAC, and prepare strategy once formally a candidate, one cannot coordinate with PACs or Super PACs under campaign finance law. Speculation was fueled when he announced he would be "actively exploring" a run for President on December 16, 2014, and resigned from several corporate boards. There had been speculation that Bush would make a run for President since the end of the 2012 election. Bush, would have been the first President to have two sons hold the same office. Bush, the 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States, respectively, Jeb Bush would have been, had he been elected, the first brother of a President, and his father, George H. He was reelected in 2002 by a sizeable margin. Four years later, in 1998, Bush ran again, defeating Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay (incumbent Governor Lawton Chiles would die in early December 1998, so although defeating MacKay, Bush succeeded MacKay, who ascended upon Chiles' death). In 1994, Bush was the Republican nominee for Governor of Florida, losing narrowly to the incumbent Lawton Chiles. Governor Jeb Bush (R) with his father and brother, former President George H. Bryan, was the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 1924.īush was assumed to be a near lock for the Republican nomination early on, and his candidacy, in which he failed to finish higher than fourth in a single primary election, is widely considered to have been a shocking fiasco. William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 19. Additionally, a pair of brothers had once-before both received nominations on a major party ticket. Kennedy's brothers Robert and Ted both sought the Democratic nomination. Bush) to win the presidency himself.īush was not the first sibling of a former president to seek a party's nomination. Had Bush been elected, he would have been the first president from Florida and the first sibling of a U.S. On February 20, 2016, Bush announced his intention to drop out of the presidential race following the South Carolina primary. The 2016 presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, the 43rd Governor of Florida, was formally launched on June 15, 2015, coming six months after announcing the formal exploration of a candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination for the President of the United States on December 16, 2014, and the formation of the Right to Rise PAC.