CONCORD, N.H. — The state whose motto is “Live Free or Die” has quickly become do or die for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The problem is, Bush may already be “dead” to most voters.
“So what do you think about Bush?” I asked Mike Dennehy, a GOP strategist with two-plus decades of experience in New Hampshire, over coffee Thursday morning.
“Boy, that’s one of the saddest stories of the entire campaign,” he responded.
Dennehy was an advisor to Rick Perry’s presidential campaign before the former Texas governor called it quits in mid-September, but says he’s impartial when it comes to the current crop of GOP hopefuls.
Except with Bush, that is.
To Dennehy, the former governor is a lost cause — an opinion expressed on a near-daily basis by political pundits and shared by many here in the Granite State.
“He’s just never caught on,” Dennehy said, pausing to sip his locally-brewed cup of joe. “He hung on for a long time, at 10-12 percent, but now it’s just … he’s not even being talked about.”
Bush will make his way to the Granite State Friday to visit with voters in three different towns. The two-day swing follows the sixth GOP primary debate in South Carolina Thursday night and comes 24 hours after his campaign began airing a new ad attacking front-runner Donald Trump.
But with Trump routinely attracting crowds in the thousands to campaign rallies here, and polling above 30 percent in state-level surveys of Republican voters, Dennehy remains skeptical that Bush’s efforts will do little, if anything, to change the course of his campaign. “Anyone who’s thinking about who to vote for, Bush is just not even in the mix.”
“Republicans want to be fired up,” Dennehy said, identifying perhaps the most difficult task for a candidate whose “low energy” brand seems to have stuck.
