Supposedly, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was in Tallahassee this week for a summit on education. But between the fundraiser he held in town, another fundraiser later in the week in New York City and the release of the first chapter of a book chronicling his time as governor through emails he sent and received, it looked a lot like the soft launch of a presidential campaign.
Not that Bush -- who has said only that he's exploring the idea of a run -- was willing to say so. During a joking exchange with Bush, one reporter referred to the former governor as "presidential candidate man."
"No," Bush responded.
"Yeah, you are," the reporter replied.
"No, I'm not," Bush said.
Semantic arguments aside, Bush's meeting with reporters after the summit was full of reminders that he's looking more and more likely to take the plunge and become a formal White House hopeful. (Bush said he had no timetable for a final decision.)
He talked about the fact that he didn't mention by name the Common Core education standards, which are incredibly controversial among conservative activists in places like Iowa. Bush offered to talk about them -- but still didn't use the words "Common Core." What he did say showed how Bush might try to massage the issue during the primaries.
"I'm for higher standards," he said. "And I'm for creating real restrictions of the federal government's role in this so you can alleviate people's fears that you're going to have some kind of control by the federal government of content or curriculum or even standards."
Bush also got in a bit of damage control. Talk was already beginning to circulate that an email data dump had inadvertently included personal information of some of the former governor's electronic pen pals, though Bush maintained that "we just released what the government gave us." The emails were public records that were already available long before Bush released them.
Still, he promised to fix the problem.
"If we have private information that's out there, we're going to take it off, for sure," Bush said.
The former governor also held forth on the threat of the Islamic State terrorist group now ravaging Iraq and Syria. The United States is leading a coalition carrying out airstrikes against the group, and Bush's summit came shortly after officials confirmed another of the group's American hostages was believed dead.
"We should not be timid about expressing exactly what their goals are, (which) is to create a caliphate to challenge our way of life. First, in places probably nearby, but also, if they had a chance, they would attack us as well. And I think we need to develop a world strategy to take them out," said Bush, sounding a bit like brother George W. Bush did from time to time when speaking about al-Qaida.
Jeb Bush promised to assess the strength of President Obama's response to the group next week, the next step in his not-yet-campaign for president.
THE STADIUM GAMES
While the wheeling-and-dealing for sports-stadium subsidies goes on in committees and behind the scenes, Americans for Prosperity Florida is taking to the airwaves to bash the whole notion.
Americans for Prosperity, funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, has a long history of opposition to tax subsidies for professional sports teams. An ad released Thursday throughout the state shames lawmakers who support using sales-tax dollars for stadium projects.
"Hollywood executives and billionaire sports team owners have plenty of fans in Tallahassee. Your state legislators want to build stadiums and make movies with taxpayer money. It's time to end government handouts to Hollywood producers and sports stadium base stealers," the ad, slated to run for 10 days, asserts before urging listeners to call legislators.
"We want to make sure the legislators hear us loud and clear," AFP Florida spokesman Andres Malave said.
Lawmakers in 2014 set aside $7 million to spend this year on stadium projects and ordered the Department of Economic Opportunity to rank the proposals. The agency's failure to identify the top projects rankled House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, who has raised the possibility that lawmakers might not fund stadium projects this year.
But Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, on Thursday defended his hometown's effort to get state tax dollars to help pay for a $110 million Major League Soccer stadium, which happened to get top billing when economists from the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research ranked the projects this week.
Lawmakers have a long history of subsidizing other stadiums, Gardiner pointed out.
"I would say if it's a bad thing, let's repeal all those things and bring them back. Nobody's calling for that," he said.
TWEET OF THE WEEK: "For any Texas reporters that follow me: Does Rick Perry talk about Rick Scott as much as Rick Scott talks about Rick Perry?" -- Matt Dixon (@mdixon55), Tallahassee bureau chief for EW Scripps.
