For Jeb Bush, a self-described introvert who hasn’t mingled much with voters since he won reelection as governor of Florida in 2002, the campaign trail may be a bit of an adjustment.
“I’ve noticed since I’ve started this journey that the whole world has a camera,” Bush mused as he answered a question about Internet access to a camera-phone wielding audience at the Pizza Ranch, a buffet-style restaurant in Cedar Rapids.
Earlier, he encountered one of the realities of the already-rollicking 2016 campaign season: immigration advocates confronted the bilingual governor about whether he would seek to repeal President Barack Obama’s decision to allow some young immigrants to stay in the country. They videotaped the encounter and sent it out via Twitter.
Twitter wasn‘t invented when he last ran. Camera phones weren’t nearly as ubiquitous. Selfies were not part of the culture. But if all that has changed, the need for retail campaigning in small, early primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina has not.
In a state famous for trotting would-be presidential candidates out to the state fairgrounds to eat corn dogs and pose with champion 4-H cows, Bush posed for countless selfies, doled out handshakes, autographed a copy of his brother’s book about their father and made certain to call on a beauty pageant contestant, wearing her sash and tiara.
He delivered not sound bites, but often lengthy and detailed replies to questions. Saturday night they included federal flood policy, net neutrality and energy. Earlier in Des Moines, he noted not just that agriculture is Florida’s second largest industry, behind tourism, but that the state produces some 300 crops.
Will a candidate who largely eschews red meat for nuance and has said he’d “ rather read a book than go out and get in a conga line” be able to rally conservatives looking for some sizzle? Sheila Anderson, 56, the owner of a math learning center in Coralville, says yes.
“He may not be the retail campaigner that someone like Rick Perry or some of the others are, but he’s also not as isolated as Hillary Clinton seems to be,” said Anderson, who waited more than an hour to hear Bush speak at the Pizza Ranch.
“Everyone asks ‘Who would you rather have a beer with?’” Anderson said. “But at the end of the day, that’s not the acid test of who you want for president. We’ll be looking at governing philosophy, leadership skills, integrity.”
Bush did engage in some primary state pandering, earning hearty applause at a Des Moines meeting when he told the audience that he’d be cooking “Iowa beef” when he returned home to Florida.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whom Bush invoked at several events and who met backstage with Bush at the Des Moines gathering, said he believes Iowans will give Bush a chance. But he acknowledged a sticking point for many remains the Bush family name.
“I believe he was a conservative governor for Florida,” Grassley said. “The only thing negative I hear at this point that his last name is ‘Bush.’ I don’t consider that a negative, but I’m afraid others do.”
Bush says he realizes he needs to introduce himself to voters. His emerging stump speech touts his record as Florida’s governor, boasting that he slashed taxes and took on the teacher’s union. He constantly tells voters he earned the nickname “Veto Corleone” because of his zest for stamping lawmakers’ pet projects out of the budget.
“I think it will be fine,” Bush told reporters Friday night at a fundraiser for Rep. David Young, R-Iowa. “There are a lot of people, including myself, that love my brother and my Dad. But I’m going to have to get this on my own. This is my opportunity for me to be able to share who I am.”
Yet even as he asserts that he’s his “own man,” Bush basks in Bush family nostalgia. At every stop, he recalled hitting the campaign trail decades ago in Iowa: His father won the 1980 Iowa caucus, upsetting front-runner Ronald Reagan, but failed to win the nomination. His father lost the Iowa caucuses in 1988, but went on to win the nomination and the presidency.
“I’ve been to Iowa when my dad lost, and when my dad won,” he told the crowd Friday night. “I like the winning part better, to be honest with you.”
Bush’s early visits made an impression on Ralph Brown, an attorney from Dallas Center, Iowa, who volunteered for Bush’s father’s Iowa campaigns. He noted that the family, including Bush’s brother, Marvin, who “basically moved to Iowa,” hit the trail hard, campaigning in all of the state’s 99 counties.
“He learned retail politics at an early age and I don’t think you ever forget,” Brown said of Jeb Bush. “It comes naturally to him.”
But Bush acknowledged that he’s had to work on his tendency to stick his nose in a policy book rather than socialize – even as he bragged to admirers that he’s “never taken off more than a week” from work.
“I intend to hang out with people, engage with them and learn from them and answer their questions,” Bush told reporters. “It’s not going to be a bubble campaign.”
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