Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush have long been cordial toward each other, even if they aren’t exactly besties. Both are former governors, aligned with the business-friendly establishment side of the Republican Party.

Now, with Romney’s announcement this week that he is exploring a third run for the White House, the two men are on a potential collision course. It’s a fight neither may be eager to have, but which some donors are framing as a referendum on the past versus the future, even if both men have been well-known political figures for years.


Romney has told many people privately that he believes Bush, as the brother of an unpopular former president, will have trouble winning the presidency. Bush, who announced last month that he was considering a presidential run, has made it clear publicly that he believes Romney ran a poor campaign when he was the GOP’s nominee in 2012.

As they each look toward 2016, and if both do end up running, they will find themselves competing for pledges from the same donors, not to mention the same pool of aides and operatives, and the same types of voters in the Republican primary.

( Also on POLITICO: Romney says he's weighing 2016 run)

Although the emerging GOP 2016 field appears to be large and unwieldy, the establishment lane would shift dramatically if both Bush and Romney were standing in it. Many Republican insiders predict potential candidates such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich would find themselves struggling.

“There are enough senior bundlers capable of putting together in the millions for both Bush and Romney but not for anyone else in the establishment group,” one bundler told POLITICO. “Romney has plenty in his network who will sign on again. Bush is putting the whole family network back together along with new people. They will compete for some big names but there will be plenty loyal to each.”

Romney, for all his flaws and his track record in the last election, has held onto some support. Bush sped up his time frame for 2016 last month by announcing his intentions on Facebook and resigning from various corporate boards, sending a clear message to donors that he was serious about a campaign just as a number of them pined openly for Romney to run again — and as Romney left them thinking he was interested.

In what struck many Republicans as a clear reaction to Bush, Romney laid down his own marker Friday during a meeting in New York with about 30 of his past supporters. As his longtime finance director Spencer Zwick stood by, the former Massachusetts governor surprised many of those gathered — some of whom have already said they are backing Bush — by saying he was considering a run and urging them to “ go tell your friends.”

Romney’s remarks Friday put in neon lights what he’d more quietly told New York financiers in December: He would not defer to Bush and did not view the former Florida governor as the de facto leader of the establishment wing of the GOP. And he followed them up on Saturday by working the phones aggressively to party strategists and others, as CNN’s David Chalian first reported.

Romney has long dreamed of the White House, and he’s been tormented by his loss to Obama in 2012. He said his decision wouldn’t be based on what anyone else did, and he insisted he has a broad vision for the country, according to attendees of Friday’s meeting. And yet his move struck a number of his own past supporters as a last gasp as the 2016 train appeared to be moving on without him.

One Republican donor said Romney’s actions could even benefit Bush by making the former Florida governor, who has been around electoral politics for three decades, look “large, fresh, new.”

Another agreed.

“If donors are wistful about the past they can wait for Mitt,” said the donor, who is close to Bush. “If they’re focused on the future, [the] Right To Rise is accepting checks, cash and credit cards.”

Even Republicans who admire Romney believe he is giving off the whiff of concern — that it appears he’s realized the Draft Mitt movement was moving either too slowly or too quietly to leave an opening for him.

“He’s trying too hard,” said one Republican strategist who has worked with Romney. “He needed to let Jeb sink or swim. Then there would have been an opening, or not.”

Romney allies say he’ll likely take the next two months or so to decide what to do — much faster than the mid-2015 time-frame many Republicans familiar with his thinking had anticipated. Unlike most other potential candidates, Romney, having already sought the presidency twice, has the ability to to hang back and wait to see how the field shakes out.

One Republican was brutal in assessing things: “This is Mitt’s version of scrambling … I think Mitt’s just keeping his options open and the next 90 days will tell just how many of those options actually exist.”

But Romney’s maneuver has also made it clear that Jeb Bush is not Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who has essentially cleared her side of the field so far of any major challengers without even declaring she’s running. And some of Romney’s most influential admirers don’t believe it’s strictly vanity that’s driving him.

“I believe that the international situation is deteriorating? so rapidly that due to his genuine patriotism, if he thinks he can beat Hillary, he will run,” said the center-right radio host Hugh Hewitt, who argued in a widely read POLITICO Magazine essay in September that Romney could easily make a third attempt at a campaign.

Romney will have an advantage over other Republican contenders by not needing to participate in several primary debates because voters already know him, Hewitt said in an interview Friday night. Still, he added, just as Bush’s steps toward a run haven’t cleared the GOP field, a Romney entry won’t either.

“No one is going to get out,” Hewitt said.

Romney’s allies often insist that there’s a clamor for him to run again, and that they hear it broadly. But so far, his cheering squad remains elites and donors, who often aren’t the best gauge of GOP primary voters’ emotions about candidates.

Romney and Bush are alike in striking ways. Both men have long eyed the White House, and their families have long political histories — though the Bushes have had better luck. Mitt Romney’s father George W., as governor of Michigan, unsuccessfully ran for president in 1968. Jeb Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, served one term in the White House, while his brother, George W. Bush, served two. George H.W.’s father, Prescott Sheldon Bush was a two-term U.S. senator in the 1950s.

The two emerging 2016 rivals have kept in touch on and off over the years. Bush campaigned for Romney in 2012, even as he mused publicly that he thought his own time to run for president probably was that year. They’ve expressed mutual admiration.

One Romney ally insisted the former nominee has nothing but warm feelings for Bush. “I don’t think there’s any personal [issue] — he loves the Bush family,” the ally said. “His decision will be completely made on does he believe that he can win and can he fix the country.”

But Romney has privately been critical of Bush in conversations with some supporters, saying he believes the former Florida governor will be vulnerable to the same kind of populist attack that Democrats used so successfully in 2012. Bush has been involved in a range of business ventures since leaving public office, including real estate and private equity.

Bush, in turn, has negatively assessed Romney’s performance in 2012, suggesting, for instance, that he tried too hard to pander to the right. People familiar with his thinking said Bush — a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform — winced in particular at Romney’s “self-deportation” remarks during the primary campaign, and sees those comments as critical to Romney’s dismal performance with Hispanic voters in the general election.

The quiet scramble for top campaign expertise may also be a factor in Romney’s calculations.

As Bush has pressed forth with his exploration of a 2016 run, he has begun consolidating not only donors but also some talent from the operative class. Rob Engstrom, the political director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which played a major role in securing establishment seats in GOP primaries in the 2014 cycle, is on leave to work for Bush’s leadership PAC.

Bush also has sought to secure some staffers who’ve worked for Romney in the past. Bush’s top political adviser, Mike Murphy, was long a Romney confidant. Romney’s top political strategist from 2012, Stuart Stevens, who still speaks with him frequently, has been a professional rival of Murphy’s in the past.

Including Romney, at least 15 Republicans are either openly considering a White House run or are being floated as potential contenders, including several — such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania — who would vie for the social conservative vote.

Several Republicans interviewed insisted they see nothing but positives in the potential chaos ahead, in part because they believe the field will include a number of strong candidates.

”The more high-quality candidates like Romney we have in the race the better,” said David Herro, a Chicago-based hedge fund manager and major GOP donor. “Choice is good.”