The first salvos in the war for the White House were fired in Miami on Monday with the two families most heavily backed by pollsters, bookies and donors officially beginning a dynastic battle unprecedented in American history.



Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have been their parties’ putative frontrunners for the 2016 presidential election since December 2014, when the former Florida governor surprised many Republicans by announcing his interest in possibly following his brother and father’s footsteps into the Oval Office.



Former secretary of state Clinton confirmed her more widely anticipated second run for the Democratic nomination in April, but it has taken another two months for both candidates to begin competing for votes – and money – in earnest and in the open.

Clinton’s first big speech in New York on Saturday was matched on Monday by a similar launch event in Bush’s adopted hometown of Miami during which he mapped out a conservative approach far removed from her increasingly populist progressive agenda.

Bush told supporters - who chanted “let’s go Jeb” - that the country was on a “very bad” course but pledged: “We will take Washington – the static capital of this dynamic country – out of the business of causing problems. We will get back on the side of free enterprise and free people.”

While his campaign logo just has his first name “Jeb” rather than “Jeb Bush” he certainly mentioned his family in his speech. He said “great things” and the most “improbable things can happen” in the US, adding: “Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born, and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital.”

Bush also asked the crowd to “say hello to my mom, Barbara Bush” who gave them a wave.

Clinton, in her New York rally two days earlier, was watched by her former president husband, and said she knew exactly what the job required. She portrayed herself as a champion of progressive causes saying she would make the economy work for “every American – for the successful and the struggling”, and attacked the “trickle-down economics” that she said a Republican president would bring.

Despite the early attacks, the two candidates share much else in common. Though Bush faces a much tougher field of Republican rivals and is a far less predictable choice than Clinton, both are favourites of their party establishments and traditional donors.



Both currently lead their primary races, according to national opinion surveys. An average of recent polls calculated by Real Clear Politics shows Bush half a percentage point ahead of his closest rival, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and Clinton some 40 points up on Vermont leftwinger Bernie Sanders.

The same polling averages place Clinton 5.2 points ahead of Bush if they were to run against each – a scenario that bookmaker William Hill also consider the most likely, with odds of 10-3.

Neither family would be a stranger to the upper echelons of US government. Clinton’s eight years as first lady to husband Bill and four years as President Obama’s secretary of state is matched not only by eight years as president by Jeb’s brother, George W Bush, but four years as president by their father George HW Bush and another eight years as vice-president under Ronald Reagan.

Should either of the present 2016 frontrunners secure a second term in office and serve through 2024, Obama’s current second term with vice-president Joe Biden and secretary of state John Kerry may mark the only time in 44 years – nearly a fifth of US history – that neither a Bush nor a Clinton occupied one of these top three positions in the US executive branch.

The dynastic consequences of such a pairing in November 2016 have not gone unnoticed among many voters and rivals, of course. Bush’s familiar pedigree is already an unspoken part of the message from the more than a dozen serious rivals trying to stop it happening. Clinton has been attacked in similar – but so far polite – terms by less competitive Democratic hopefuls such as Martin O’Malley.

Yet the dislike of another Bush in the West Wing is restricted mostly to Democrats, just as it is Republicans who are most against the idea of Hillary and Bill returning to the White House.

Republican consultants such as former George W Bush adviser Chris Henick point to polling suggesting particularly fond memories for the family among those who Jeb most needs to vote for him in the primary.

A recent poll carried out for CNN at the end of May showed that 78% of Democrats say the fact that Jeb Bush is the son and brother of former presidents makes them less likely to vote for him, and only 14% more likely.



However, among Republicans, there is almost a complete reversal: 48% more likely, and 32% less likely.

Privately, many Clinton supporters would also prefer her to run against Bush than a younger so-called change candidate such as Rand Paul or Marco Rubio, not least because her historic role as the first female president would compare favourably with the prospect of a third man from the same family. A number of Republican rivals such as Paul and Walker poll better against Clinton, though it hasn’t stopped much of the money flowing to the two frontrunners.

Both have also been accused of hiding the extent of their prodigious fundraising from the public: Bush by delaying the start of his legal reporting requirements by holding back his formal declaration, and Clinton by refusing to allow reporters into her many fundraising dinners, as some other candidates and President Obama do.

The lack of transparency has led some commentators to doubt whether Bush’s political action committees will hit their initial aggressive fund raising targets – up to $100m in the first quarter, according to estimates – but those close to him have little doubt the money is flowing.

“He is raising a lot of money,” says Florida lobbyist and fundraiser Van Poole, a former chair of the state’s Republican party. “I am not concerned about that at all. I think he will outraise everybody. He’s got a great base, particularly the business community in this state.”

Henick also agrees that recent legal changes in the way candidates can raise almost unlimited sums from donors to supportive committees makes it inevitable that the money trail is following a different path this cycle.

“With Citizens United [the supreme court ruling that changed the face of campaign donation] and how the landscape has changed financially, what you do now is so different from what you used to do in the past,” he says. “A lot of people have criticised him but I think he’s played it like a Stradivarius.”