Jeb Bush’s campaign gathered dirt on Sen. Marco Rubio and plans to invest millions in New Hampshire ad buys in January, according to a 112-page memo leaked to U.S. News Thursday.
The memo contained internal polls and a non-committal plan to approach Iowa, as well as information meant to ease the mind of anxious donors.
The leak came just after the former Florida governor delivered a lackluster performance at the third GOP primary debate Wednesday. Observers worried his campaign was in trouble after he came up short in an exchange with Rubio.
“Those who have looked into Marco’s background in the past have been concerned with what they have found,” the memo said of Rubio, according to the report. It appears to be an allusion to a rumor that Mitt Romney’s team uncovered during his vice president vetting process.
But Beth Myers, a former Romney aide, disputed the notion that the team had found anything negative in Rubio’s background.
“As the senior Romney advisor who handled VP vetting and had access to all the vetting documents, I can say that Senator Rubio ‘passed,’ our vetting and we found nothing that disqualified him from serving as VP,” Myers said in an email.
Bush and Rubio have jockeyed for the favor of the Republican establishment as outsiders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson have dominated national polls.
But Bush has struggled in recent weeks to muster enthusiasm for his candidacy, a problem made worse by Wednesday’s debate.
