Jeb Bush’s Super PAC, Right to Rise USA, raised a total of $118 million during 2015, but only $15.1 million in the second half of the year, according to campaign finance reports.
Right to Rise received its largest donation within the last six months – $10 million – from a company owned by former AIG chief Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, reports the Washington Post. Florida healthcare executive Miguel B. Fernandez donated $3 million earlier last year, and Morton Bouchard of Melville, New York donated $1 million.
Right to Rise – which has spent more on the 2016 race than any other independent entity – has shelled out some $65 million on television spots, digital ads, and mailers to promote Bush. By contrast, Marco Rubio’s Super PAC, Conservative Solutions, has spent just more than $20 million in support of its candidate.
Bush’s Super PAC has drawn criticism for spending much of its money on attacking Rubio rather than GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Some of Bush’s donors are complaining he is “burning money” with lavish spending on high price hotels and private planes while his poll numbers have plummeted.
Former Bloomberg News editor Al Hunt observes that the Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll released last Saturday finds Bush is in a four-way tie for seventh place in the GOP primary race – with only two percent of the vote – and the highest number of negatives of all the GOP candidates.
Right to Rise ended 2015 with $58.6 million in the bank.