|
Institutional
Affiliations
George
Bush Presidential Library: Director and Trustee (2)
Governor’s
Family Literacy Initiative for Florida: Instituted in conjunction
with Verizon Wireless (3)
Project
for the New American Century:
signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles (1997)
Foundation
for Florida’s Future: A not-for-profit organization
that “has worked to impact public policy at the grassroots
level,” established in 1995 (2)
Liberty
City Charter School: Co-Founded with the Urban League of Greater
Miami (2)
Florida
Campaign to Re-Elect George Bush: State Chairman, 1992 (1)
Campaign
to Re-Elect Florida Gov. Bob Martinez: State Chairman, 1990
(1)
Government
Service
State
of Florida: Commerce Secretary, 1987-1988 (1)
Dade
County Republican Committee: Chairman, 1984-1986 (1)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Codina-Bush
Real Estate Agency: Co-Founder,
President and CEO (1, 2)
Texas
Commerce Bank: Vice President (until 1980) for branch in
Caracas, Venezuela (1)
Education
University
of Texas:
B.A. in Latin American Studies, 1974 (1)
|
Highlights
& Quotes
Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush, a founding member of the Project
for the New American Century and the brother of George
W. Bush, has been a trailblazer--along with his brother--of
so-called compassionate conservatism. After he lost his first bid
to be Florida’s governor in 1994, Bush converted to Catholicism
(his wife’s religion), began urging his fellow Republicans
to pay more attention to minorities, became a godfather to a poor
black boy, and opened a charter school in one of Miami’s most
destitute neighborhoods. (During the 1994 governor’s race
he had said he would probably do “nothing” for blacks.)
(1)
But
compassionate conservatism apparently has its limitations. In the
1996 book Profiles in Character, which Jeb Bush coauthored with
Brian Yablonski, Bush laid out his view of “modern victim
movements”: “The surest way to get something in today’s
society is to elevate one’s status to that of the oppressed.
... Many of the modern victim movements -- the gay rights movement,
the feminist movement, the black empowerment movement -- have attempted
to get people to view themselves as part of a smaller group deserving
something from society. ... Eventually there will come a time when
everybody will be able to claim some status as a victim of society,
leaving few in society who will actually be considered the victimizers.”
(4)
Bush
has also called for fewer death row appeals and faster executions
while at the same time arguing that Florida should withdraw from
Aid to Families with Dependant Children and replace it with “temporary
assistance.” (5)
Jeb
is widely considered to have aided his brother’s controversial
election victory in Florida by disqualifying thousands of predominately
African American voters who were falsely accused of being convicted
felons. According to a Salon.com investigation of Florida's voter
rolls, “many voters, perhaps thousands, lost their right to
vote because their names appeared on a flaw-ridden list generated
by DBT Online (which has tight Republican ties) that included purported
‘felons.’ The investigation revealed that the lists
were used in different ways at each of the state's 67 individual
county election boards. Some found the list too unreliable and didn't
use it at all, but most used the file as a resource to purge names
from their voter lists. A disproportionate number of the voters
purged were Democrats.” (7)
Jeb
also serves as one of the Republican party’s key links to
the Latino rightwing. He helped push Iran-Contra veteran Otto Reich’s
nomination as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs, is well-connected to anti-Castro lobbyists in Florida,
and played a role in getting Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile who was
arrested in 1976 for masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner
that resulted in the deaths of 73 people, released from prison.
(8)
|
