Getty Jeb Bush slashes campaign salaries As his once formidable fundraising juggernaut slows down, the governor cuts back.

Jeb Bush’s campaign slashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries over the past three months as the struggling candidate's fundraising machine slowed to a more middling pace, new campaign-finance reports indicate.

No longer able to raise unlimited sums with his super PAC, Bush hauled in $13.4 million in the third quarter for his campaign. That’s more than all of his GOP rivals except Ben Carson. But Bush also spent more than many of them, leaving him with about as much money in the bank as Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz has more.


Bush’s campaign once saw its size and staff as its strength. But the newly released campaign-finance reports indicate it could be a liability if fundraising slacks further.

More than 60 Bush staffers might have had their salaries cut or their positions changed to reduce their income, compared with the second quarter, when Bush announced his candidacy, the campaign-finance reports show. The campaign did not want to discuss the numbers. But the pay cuts, depending on whether the salaries are divided on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, could have saved the campaign anywhere from $450,000 to nearly $900,000 per quarter, according to a POLITICO analysis of the campaign’s payroll. The cuts have ranged from the small for some staffers ($12 a week) to large reductions for four of the top campaign chiefs who each took a $75,000 pay cut.

The Bush campaign payroll is still huge: nearly $1.7 million this quarter. It spent as much as $2 million more on various consulting-related services, from fundraising to legal compliance.

Danny Diaz, Bush’s campaign manager, issued a lengthy, data-packed memo Thursday that announced the fundraising numbers and pointed to early state media reports showcasing the strength of the campaign’s ground game: 10 staffers and two offices in Iowa; 12 staffers and one office in New Hampshire; seven staffers and two offices in South Carolina; 8 staffers and two offices in Nevada.

“We have hundreds of volunteers who have already committed they will travel to the early states to turn out the vote for Jeb,” Diaz wrote, boasting of the campaign’s “micro-targeting” efforts to find Bush voters in a “database of approximately 260 million individuals with about 3,000 data points (e.g. hunting interest, magazine subscriptions, online habits, etc.). We also have more than 30,000 tags built off of previous identification efforts and have made hundreds of thousands of calls into early state voters.”

And the campaign has knocked on doors, made calls, sent mail and advertised so much that it has made more than 1 million voter contacts, Diaz said.

All of that fancy voter targeting of course, costs money: The Bush campaign shelled out $140,000 to Deep Root Analytics, a Beltway big data firm; another $72,000 went to polling consultants at Axis Research; thousands more went to lists of one kind or another.

And to rivals and the few neutral Republicans observing the race, all of the data about voter contacts indicate Bush’s weak position.

“We’ve reached 1 million people and we’re in fifth place nationally?” said one Bush supporter who didn’t want to be identified. “I trust the campaign. I just don’t know about the voters. It’s like the more Jeb is out there, the less well he does.”

Many donors hoped Bush would raise more. Diaz, anticipating and responding to the criticism, pointed out that the party’s former nominee, Mitt Romney, pulled in only slightly more money, $14.2 million, in the third quarter before the last presidential election, when the field wasn’t as robust.

Diaz also took a shot at GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who has raised and spent nearly nothing but has rocketed to and remained at the top of the field on the force of his personality and name ID.

“We knew from the start this was going to be a hard fought and close race, but few could have anticipated just how volatile this field would be,” Diaz wrote. “I — for one — would be less than forthcoming if I said we predicted in June that a reality television star supporting Canadian-style single-payer health care and partial-birth abortion would be leading the Republican primary.”

Diaz also boasted about the super PAC that’s bearing the bulk of Bush’s advertising expenses, just as a political nonprofit called Conservative Solutions is helping Rubio, albeit to a lesser extent.

“The Right to Rise Super PAC has $33 million reserved for advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina,” Diaz wrote. “The only other committee with reservations that even approach that amount is Sen. Rubio and The Associated Press recently reported that with his current cash on hand he ‘cannot afford the space he has reserved.’”

Diaz’s comments underscore the alternate obsessions Bush’s backers have had with Rubio and Trump. Early last year, top Bush supporters said Rubio shouldn’t or wouldn’t run out of respect for his mentor. Rubio, did and now slightly leads Bush in many polls. Along with most political observers, Bush’s campaign also thought Trump wouldn’t run, wouldn’t rise and wouldn’t stay on top — all assumptions that have been proven terribly wrong so far.

Financially, Rubio isn’t much of threat to Bush because they hail from the same state, where the former governor owns establishment support. Partly as a result, Rubio raised less than $6 million last quarter. But he spent less and closed the quarter with about $9.7 million in the bank that he can use in the primary. Bush ended with just a little more: $10 million.

Though Rubio was more modest with his spending, he wasn’t completely frugal. He spent about $271,000 on private jet flights — including one from Koch Industries Aviation, owned by the billionaire conservative financier Koch brothers. Rubio spent less on domestic carriers, about $156,000.

Rubio’s seeming penchant for private flights could conflict with the image of the tight-fisted candidate portrayed by his campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, who last month said that “Marco flies 95 percent commercial, always coach. He gets mileage upgrades.”

Bush’s campaign and backers have been training their fire on Rubio’s missed votes in the U.S. Senate. On Thursday, Jeb Bush Jr. repeated the criticism at a New York University College Republicans event.

“As a Floridian, I'm a little disappointed, because he's missing, like, 35 percent of his votes,” the younger Bush said. “And it's just, kind of, like, dude, you know, either drop out or do something, but we're paying you to do something, it ain't run for president.”

Rubio’s supporters say they welcome the attacks. It’s a sign, they say, that Bush is desperate. Even though Rubio was outraised by Bush, Carson, Cruz and Carly Fiorina, his supporters insist Rubio’s in a good spot to take advantage of what they say is a looming collapse of Bush if he’s unable to continue to pay for his mammoth campaign.

One Republican consultant likened the battle between the two to the 1980s action movie “Predator,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Thoughts on Jeb's number: He is mere mortal,” the consultant said by text message. “Reminds me of the movie "Predator," when they realize that the predator is bleeding. Arnold says, ‘if it bleeds, we can kill it.’ Jeb's number is translucent green alien paint glimmering on a palm frond.”