Gov. Jeb Bush (R) Elected 1998, 2d term up Jan. 2007
Born:	Feb. 11, 1953, Midland, TX
Home:	Miami
Education:	U. of TX, B.A. 1974
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Columba)
Elected  Office:	FL Commerce Secy., 1987-88.
Professional Career:	Pres. & COO, Codina Group, 1981-94; Founder & Chmn., Foundation for Florida's Future, 1995-98.
Office	The Capitol, Tallahassee 32399, 850-488-4441; Fax: 850-487-0801; Web: www.state.fl.us.
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Jeb Bush, son of President George H. W. Bush and brother of President George W. Bush, was elected governor of Florida in 1998 and 2002. Jeb grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He majored in Latin American studies at the University of Texas and there met his wife, Columba, who is originally from Mexico. He speaks Spanish fluently--but with more of a Mexican than Cuban accent, he notes. In 1981 he moved to Miami and started a real estate development company. For a year or so, he was Commerce secretary under Republican Governor Bob Martinez. With a well-known name and strong convictions on issues, he decided to run against Governor Lawton Chiles in 1994, vanquishing competition in the Republican primary and leading in polls during most of the fall. Chiles started emphasizing his "cracker" roots and called himself "the he-coon [who] always walks before the light of day." The result was a 51%-49% Chiles victory.

Bush immediately started running again. While his positions on issues did not change much, his approach and his tone did. The consensus in Florida had been moving for some time toward Bush and now Bush came some distance toward the consensus. He entered 1998 as the heavy favorite for governor while Democrats inflicted damage on themselves. Democrats noisily looked for alternatives to the likely nominee, Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay, though MacKay had received good press for his work in office and nearly beat Connie Mack for senator in 1988. Bush won 55%-45%.

As governor, Bush has worked relentlessly to put into place, with the help of Republican legislatures, a series of programs that cut tax rates, encourage market provision of services in welfare, health care and education, and end racial discrimination by government. An example of the last is Bush's One Florida program, to curtail quotas and set-asides in state contracts, get rid of quotas and preferences in state colleges and universities and replace them by guaranteeing places in the state's 10 public colleges to the top 20% of every high school graduating class. It was initially a response to the effort by Ward Connerly, sponsor of California's 1996 Proposition 209 which outlawed state government racial quotas and preferences, to put a similar proposition on the Florida ballot, which Bush said would start a "war." One Florida prompted sit-ins in Bush's office by black legislators and lawsuits that were eventually dismissed. But predictions that the policy would reduce the number of blacks and other minorities in state universities have been proven wrong: the percentage of minorities admitted rose from 33% in 1999 to 35% in 2004. And those admitted were better prepared, thanks to efforts to improve education in lower grades and to quadruple the number of minorities taking the PSAT. As Bush said in December 2004, "In Florida we don't push unprepared children forward. Nor do we separate them by racial classification. We maintain that the best way to ensure minority participation in higher education is to provide the same opportunities and support to all students and to hold all students to the same standards."

On education, Bush moved to seek accountability in schools before Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. His A-Plus program set up a series of tests and provided that students in schools found to be failing after a period of time could obtain vouchers to be used to attend other public or private schools. This was vigorously opposed by teacher unions and passed over their opposition. By 2003, some 24,000 students were receiving vouchers; perhaps more important, test scores had risen throughout the state far more than many education professionals had predicted. The threat of competition elicited better performance from thousands of teachers and students. To shore up middle schools, where test scores improved less, Bush signed a bill in 2004 providing reading coaches for middle school teachers and in 2005 he proposed more standardized tests and graduation requirements for middle schools similar to those of high schools. Bush also pushed for an innovative policy on pre-kindergarten. In 2002 he got voters to approve a voluntary pre-K program and in 2004 the legislature passed a bill he signed, with standards for class size, curriculum and teacher certification; it provided vouchers and encouraged private school rather than public school pre-K. Bush's major setback on education was the passage by a 52%-48% margin in November 2002 of Amendment 9, a teacher union-backed measure requiring that class size be reduced to 18 in grades K-3, 22 in grades 4-8 and 25 in grades 9-12 in 2010. Bush argued that this would cost an extra $27 billion and that studies had shown that reducing class size produced little gain in achievement. He proposed his own program for $2.8 billion over five years to build 12,000 new classrooms. In March 2003 he called for repeal of Amendment 9, but failed to get it; 60% of the year's increase in education spending went for reducing class size. By December 2004 it appeared that the state would have to add at least 30,000 new teachers to the current total of 160,000, and school districts were having trouble finding math, science and special education applicants.

Since his first years in office, Bush moved persistently to reduce tax rates, with considerable success. Florida's rapid population growth has increased demands on government, but lower taxes have arguably spurred economic growth which has generated revenues to provide higher spending. The state's tourism industry suffered in the aftermath of September 11, but had fully recovered by 2004, and the state's economy suffered little from the recession that hurt many other states. In 2000 Bush succeeded in cutting taxes by $500 million, while increasing highway spending and putting up money for the Everglades restoration program. In 2001 he pressed for more tax cuts, and in October called a special session of the legislation to cut spending to account for a budget shortfall; the intangibles tax cut was delayed. In January 2002 his budget provided just a 1% increase in spending. The 2004 budget included $220 million in tax cuts, more than half for businesses, and Bush vetoed $349 million in spending proposals. In January 2005 he proposed a $61 billion budget, with increases in most programs; one-third of the increases were for education, with half of those for reducing class size.

Medicaid is a major expense for Florida state government. In 2001 Bush negotiated rebates with pharmaceutical companies saving 15% on the Medicaid budget. In 2004 he signed a bill requiring insurance companies to offer health savings accounts to small business and got the legislature to authorize HMOs in Medicaid. In January 2005 he proposed "empowered care"--with Medicaid recipients given certain funds, depending on their medical conditions, and HMOs and other private insurers competing to provide coverage. He also sought to get HMOs to provide in-home care rather than nursing home care to the eligible elderly.

In January 2002 the Bushes signed an agreement to implement the Everglades restoration plan approved by Congress by spending $7.8 billion over 30 years to restore 2.4 million acres and provide an extra 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water yearly to south Florida. He got his brother George W. Bush in his 2004 budget to increase Everglades spending from $28 to $67 million and to provide $40 million to begin buying out the Collier family's right to drill for oil in the Big Cypress National Preserve. After Democrats complained about inaction, Jeb Bush in October 2004 proposed to borrow $1.5 billion to build eight projects over seven years, to be run by the South Florida Water Management District rather than the Army Corps of Engineers.

Jeb Bush has been judged in Florida largely on his record in state government, but national political commentators have treated him largely as the brother of the 2000 presidential nominee and the 43d president. Jeb Bush did not take a highly visible role in the 2000 presidential campaign. When it became clear that there would be a battle over the Florida results, he recused himself from the three-member board of elections, substituting Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, a Democrat who had endorsed George W. Bush; charges that he orchestrated Secretary of State Katherine Harris' decisions to certify George W. Bush as the winner foundered for lack of evidence. He did say that he would sign a proclamation by the Florida legislature that the Republican electors had won, but there was nothing to back the charges that somehow the governor of Florida had stolen the election for his brother. The day after the election was decided, he appeared with officials of both parties and announced the formation of a bipartisan commission to study Florida's election procedures. In March 2001 it came forward with its recommendations, including getting rid of punch card ballots, leasing optical scanning equipment for all counties for the 2002 election and setting a uniform standard for recounts; these were embodied in a bill signed in May 2001. Voting machine problems occurred in the September 2002 primary, but there were no significant problems in 2004, when George W. Bush's Florida margin was far too large to provide any basis for challenge.

After the 2000 Florida controversy, Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe declared that Jeb Bush would be the party's number one target in 2002, and many Democrats predicted a surge of turnout against him from Democrats convinced their party had been cheated of the presidency. Bush had additional problems as well. In 2002 it was reported that the Department of Children and Families had lost track of some 500 children under its supervision, and that three had died; the agency head resigned in August 2002. But Bush's job rating remained well above 50% in 2001 and 2002, and Democrats had a hard time finding a candidate.

On September 4, 2001, former Attorney General and Dade County State's Attorney Janet Reno announced she was running. Reno, as a Miami-Dade liberal, seemed well positioned to win votes from blacks and women in the Democratic primary but, despite her travels around the state in a red pickup truck, less well positioned to win vital votes in the general election. Two other declared candidates, state Senator Darryl Jones and state Representative Lois Frankel, also represented core Democratic constituencies and seemed to have little general election appeal. Democratic insiders and the teacher unions found another candidate in Bill McBride, from 1992 to 2001 managing partner of Tampa's Holland & Knight, the largest law firm in Florida. McBride grew up in the small town of Leesburg, the son of a TV repairman; he gave up a football scholarship after his knee was injured and worked his way through school; he left law school to enlist in the Marine Corps and was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam. He was endorsed by the state AFL-CIO in April 2002. Reno called for health care and schooling for preschoolers; McBride called for a 50-cent increase in the cigarette tax to increase spending on education. In the weeks before the September 10 primary McBride was running even with Reno in the polls. McBride led in the first count by 8,196 votes out of 1.3 million cast, and was certified as the winner September 12. But Miami-Dade County, where Reno led by a wide margin, had not prepared to handle the new voting equipment, and was still counting votes. Florida's revised election laws require a recount if the margin is less than 0.5% of the vote, and Reno demanded a recount as the vote hovered just outside that. On September 17 Miami-Dade votes came in; Reno, still behind by 4,794 votes, 44.4%-44.0% conceded and endorsed McBride. But his campaign had lost a week of an already short general election campaign.

The chief issue in the general election turned out to be Amendment 9, the teacher union measure to reduce class size. Proponents said it would cost only $4 billion over seven years; Bush cited a state government study saying that it would cost $27 billion--a huge amount in a state whose budgets have been hovering around $50 billion. Bush strongly opposed it and proposed his own program for $2.8 billion over five years to build 12,000 new classrooms. McBride, who called Bush's A-plus program a "mirage" and an "illusion" and his testing program "foolish," strongly supported it. Under state law the estimated cost of a ballot proposition has to be put on the ballot; but a Florida judge, in a move that would not surprise those who remember the 2000 Florida ballot controversy, ruled it unnecessary. At one point Bush seemed to stumble on the issue. On October 3, in a Capitol conversation with three Pensacola area legislators witnessed by a Gannett News Service reporter, Bush talked about how he would respond if Amendment 9 passed. "We're going to have to cut nursing homes. So I've got a couple of devious plans if this thing passes. … We might want to have another look at it." The next day his words were in Gannett's Pensacola News Journal and a tape of him speaking them was on the paper's website. But McBride stumbled even more. Bush proceeded to bombard television viewers with ads citing his accomplishments and attacking McBride for saying different things to different audiences, hinting that he was a hidden liberal indebted to the teachers' unions and charging that his proposal to eliminate Bush's testing would cost the state $2.5 billion in federal aid. On October 22 the candidates appeared in a debate moderated by Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Bush answered questions with mastery of knowledge of state government. McBride was charmingly talkative but unspecific. When Russert asked him whether Amendment 9 would cost $3 billion as some proponents claimed or $27 billion as Bush claimed, McBride said it was "somewhere in between the $8 billion and the $27 billion" and conceded it could cost $12 to $15 billion. His response gave credence to Bush ads that charged that McBride's overexpansion at Holland & Knight showed that as an executive he was overly optimistic and inclined to overspending.

Bush won by the impressive margin of 56%-43%. He carried Hispanic precincts throughout the state and had huge margins in Cuban areas in Miami-Dade County. He lost ground compared to 1998 in Tallahassee and in small north Florida counties with universities, prisons or other state facilities: his Service First overhauls of the state personnel system and privatization of non-core functions of state agencies made him unpopular with public employee unions. Bush lost the Gold Coast by only 54%-46%; he carried the I-4 corridor by a solid 58%-41% and carried the other counties in the south 62%-37% and in the north 59%-40%. Republican Charlie Crist was elected attorney general over Democrat Buddy Dwyer 53%-47%, completing the Republican sweep of statewide offices. Republican margins were increased in the state Senate to 26-14 and the state House to 81-39.

Bush continued to make national headlines in his second term. Acting under a law passed by the legislature, he ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube inserted in October 2003; Florida courts ruled this unconstitutional in a series of decisions in 2004, and ultimately Schiavo died after she was denied food and water in March 2005. In August and September 2004 Florida was hit by a record four devastating hurricanes. Bush traveled indefatigably around the state, and his relief efforts resulted in 62% job approval. He successfully pressed Congress for $2 billion of disaster relief in September and $11 billion in November. In November he proposed rebates on property taxes for homeowners whose homes were uninhabitable. That was voted in December, along with rebates on second and third deductibles; high deductibles had been instituted after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but it was never envisaged that homeowners would have to pay more than one deductible a year. The legislature also voted a $1,500 sales tax breaks for buyers of replacement mobile homes. Curiously, the hurricane proved to be a windfall for state government, with recovery and construction activity generating some $3 billion in increased revenues over two years, to help Florida's already booming economy.

Jeb Bush has been mentioned, since he started running for governor in 1993, as a possible presidential candidate. As governor, he has had some international experience, on business and tourism promotion trips to Central America, Mexico and Canada and on no less than four trips to Israel. In January 2005, his brother sent him and Secretary of State Colin Powell to Indonesia and other countries stricken by the December 26, 2004 tsunami. But this son and brother of presidents seemed to rule a presidential run out, at least for 2008. "I'm not going to run for president in 2008," he told reporters in October 2004. "I'll go back to Miami and I'll figure out what I'm going to do. But it isn't going to be running for president, I promise." But he has not promised not to run for vice president, and will be just 53 when he leaves office as governor; he could conceivably run for president as late as 2020, when he will turn 67.

The open governor race in 2006 seemed sure in early 2005 to attract many candidates. Among the Republicans mentioned were statewide officials: Lieutenant Governor Toni Jennings, Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. Among the Democrats mentioned were Congressman Jim Davis, state Representative Rod Smith, Democratic state Chairman Scott Maddox, and Anthony Shriver, Miami Beach-based head of the Best Buddies organization, son of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver and brother-in-law of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Jeb Bush (R)	2,856,845	56%
	Bill McBride (D)	2,201,427	43%
2002 primary	Jeb Bush (R)	unopposed
1998 general	Jeb Bush (R)	2,192,105	55%
	Buddy MacKay (D)	1,773,054	45%