Jeb Bush is beginning 2015 unemployed.
The former Florida governor has resigned from each of his corporate and nonprofit board memberships. He also left his own education foundation. An aide to the Republican emailed the resignation news to The Washington Post late Wednesday.
It is the latest hint that Jeb Bush may seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Last month, he told potential supporters, “Keep your powder dry.”
More changes may be coming. The newspaper also reported that the aide said that “Bush was reviewing other businesses in which he is principal partner or owner, such as Jeb Bush & Associates, a consulting firm, and Britton Hill Partnership, a business advisory group that in 2013 set up private-equity funds investing in energy and aviation.”
His various resignations are “part and parcel of a process he is going through as he transitions to focus on a potential run for president,” his spokeswoman Kristy Campbell told the Post. “This is a natural next step that will allow him to focus his time on gauging interest for a potential run.”
Bush, a millionaire, has forged complex business ties since he left office in 2007.
For example, he has collected more than $2 million from his position on the board of Tenet Healthcare. Tenet supported Obamacare and has benefited from the law’s passage. Jeb Bush was also, until recently, a consultant for Barclays, a British investment banking company. He earned $1 million a year for that. Bush maintained a financial stake in Academic Partnerships, an online education firm, as well.
Bush faces a tough road ahead, as he is on the wrong side of issues conservatives care about. As Dr. Susan Berry wrote in September, “Bush has been an outspoken champion of both amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Common Core standards, the Obama-supported and federally funded education initiative that opponents say espouses a utilitarian workforce mentality.”
But he may try to spin that as an advantage in 2016. Last month, he told an audience, “I kinda know how a Republican can win, whether it’s me or somebody else–and it has to be much more uplifting, much more positive, much more willing to be … ‘lose the primary to win the general’ without violating your principles.”
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