NEW YORK — Mitt Romney’s exit from the 2016 presidential race sets up a critical challenge for Jeb Bush, top Republicans say: If the former Florida governor can scoop up many of Romney’s big donors, he would set himself up as the dominant front-runner in the establishment wing of the party — and make life much more difficult for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

“It sets up the first big test for Jeb on whether he can start closing all these big donors right now and cement his status as the premier candidate in the field and the one who offers the best chance in the general election,” said Kevin Madden, who served as a senior adviser and spokesman for Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “Many donors were held in check waiting on Mitt and now the question is how quickly can [Bush] lock them down while facing competition from Christie and some of the others.”


Wall Street executives and other big donors often cite Bush as their top choice. That is likely to increase with Romney, a former Wall Street titan, out of the race. But it will not be a slam-dunk.

Romney made it clear on a conference call with supporters on Friday announcing his decision not to run that he would prefer someone other than Bush to be the 2016 GOP nominee. The early 2016 jousting showed just how little Romney thinks of Bush as a candidate.

“I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders … may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee,” Romney said Friday. “In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.”

Nonetheless, people close to Romney said Bush’s early fundraising and organizational success were significant factors in Romney’s decision to forgo a race, despite the 2012 GOP nominee’s fervent belief that he could have won.

Bush supporters on Friday said they would immediately begin courting Romney backers. And they widely praised Romney’s decision while ignoring the oblique jabs at Bush.

“Mitt really was a patriot for his party today, and lots of donors and their financial advisers are breathing a sigh of relief,” said one GOP bundler who is backing Bush and declined to be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak on Bush’s behalf. In a Facebook posting shortly after Romney’s decision, Bush also called the 2012 nominee a “patriot” and “a leader in our party for many years.”

The bundler also had a pointed message for the governor of New Jersey.

“Gov. Christie may think he sees light now, but it is really the Jeb freight train coming straight at him. Jeb still has a lot to do to shore up his relations with the base, and his folks aren’t foolish enough to start doing victory laps, but it was a very good development for him.”

Christie backers dismissed that kind of bravado and said the race was back to where it was before the flurry of Romney speculation.

Billionaire Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, Christie’s biggest Wall Street supporter, said Romney’s decision would not have a big effect on the race but could ease pressure on the New Jersey governor.

“If anything it allows Chris to push back his timetable a bit now,” Langone said. “And of course with one less person taking a piece of the pie there is more pie to go around.”

“The Mitt Romney dalliance was a momentary blip in what is going to be a long road,” added a longtime Christie supporter. “Christie has been obviously contemplating a run for a while. And his thinking like every other candidate did not include Mitt Romney in the calculation until three weeks ago and now after that three-week period … everything is back to where they were from a planning perspective.”

While Christie has not formed a super PAC yet, he will also be under pressure to post a large first quarter haul for his leadership PAC. Christie has already been able to pick off some of Romney’s supporters, including Ray Washburne, a Dallas-area bundler and former Republican National Committee finance chairman.

Bobbie Kilberg, a GOP fundraiser in Virginia who was supportive of Romney, said she believes Christie stands to gain the most from Romney’s decision to pass.

“We now have two candidates in the center-right rather than three” Kilberg said. “And the pie divided two ways instead of three benefits both Jeb and Chris. But it probably benefits Chris more because I think there is more overlap between potential Romney donors and potential Christie donors.”

Romney was scheduled to dine with Christie on Friday night. But the engagement was scheduled before Romney’s announcement and was not meant to signal any kind of endorsement, people familiar with the matter said.

Romney was working hard to win support from several top names including casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, among others. But he had not locked down public support from many top GOP donors and bundlers and “clearly wasn’t going to have the kind of support that people would have thought,” said one veteran Republican donor.

It’s not clear that any of these major players will move quickly to back anyone in the current crowded GOP field. Instead, they may wait to see how the early campaign season develops and how individual candidates fare on the stump.

A move by any of them toward Bush would be a significant sign of the former Florida governor’s potency. Romney supporters cited several other names as likely targets for Bush now, including John Rakolta, Romney’s 2008 finance chair, Cincinnati billionaire Carl Lindner and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, among others. Some question whether Bush might also be able to draw support from Romney loyalists Bob White and Spencer Zwick, something that seems unlikely given Romney’s desire for a fresh face to get the nomination.

Several donors said that Romney’s withdrawal could help other candidates besides Bush. Marco Rubio, for one, might get a fresh look: The Florida senator has made the rounds on Wall Street and enjoys support from Blackstone Group executive Wayne Berman, among others.

Romney was dominant in 2012 raising money from executives at big Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and others. Christie is barred from raising money from the banks because of strict pay-to-play rules covering sitting governors who can steer lucrative underwriting and advisory business to Wall Street. That leaves Bush with a mostly clear shot at Wall Street money, though Rubio and some others may make new inroads.

While Christie operatives are expected to go after Romney supporters, there isn’t much love lost between the two camps. Many key Romney donors have long blamed Christie for Romney’s loss in 2012 after the infamous pre-election, bipartisan hug with President Barack Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Bush supporters said Romney’s decision to get out early would make it easier for him to lock down more financial backers.

“I think from a finance committee, bundler point of view this obviously simplifies things and therefore is a good day for Jeb Bush,” said Dirk Van Dongen, head of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a longtime Republican operative. “I’m raising for Jeb and am working, among other things, to recruit folks to raise money for him, with some success I might add. But there are a number of folks who I’ve talked to who said, ‘Look, I have to wait until Mitt Romney makes his mind up, if he doesn’t run I’ll be with Jeb.’”

Van Dongen said he expects those bundlers to now shift their allegiance to Bush and be active fundraisers.

Republicans across the board have credited Bush with putting together an aggressive early fundraising operation, securing support from a large number of veteran presidential bundlers. The former Florida governor has also laid out an aggressive fundraising schedule before the first quarter reporting deadline. In addition to starting a leadership PAC, his operation has also launched a super PAC that can collect unlimited contributions. Bush can help raise money for both entities before he becomes an official presidential candidate.

While Bush operatives have denied the $100 million fundraising goal that several news outlets reported, they acknowledge that a low number could hurt his campaign.

“They’ve created an expectation,” said one veteran Republican operative. “Clearly, the expectation is he will assemble a very large bundler team.” Those expectations will now be even higher without Romney in the race.

Bush has already moved aggressively to create buzz in major Republican fundraising pockets in the Northeast and West Coast. In Washington, he has already had multiple sessions with former Bush administration officials, many of whom have committed to co-host multiple events in mid-February when he is back inside the Beltway.

In addition to Romney giving Bush the brush-off on Friday, there is also the question of whether prominent bundlers will be wary of getting lost inside the Bush juggernaut, where they might not enjoy top-dog status.

“It’s a dating game to see who they like,” said one GOP lobbyist. “A lot of these guys have big egos and they want to be the guys, or one of the [main] guys, and the Bush team already has a lot of these. They are going to be thirsty for that level of access they had with Romney, and they are going to want to try and get that with someone else.”