Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign has publicly attacked Donald Trump, but it has privately targeted Carly Fiorina.
April Ponnuru, a top policy adviser to Florida’s former governor, sent an email received by the Washington Examiner that highlights Fiorina’s past support for healthcare mandates akin to Obamacare’s controversial individual mandate.
“As recently as 2013, Carly Fiorina supported Obamacare’s most hated feature: the individual mandate,” Ponnuru wrote. “She spoke out for making Americans buy insurance policies that meet the specifications of Washington, D.C., or pay a fine to the federal government.”
Her email included a hyperlink to a video of Fiorina and she added, “Note that this video is from 2013, which means she supported this policy even after conservatives went to the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate.”
Sarah Isgur Flores, Fiorina’s deputy campagin manager, responded swiftly by saying the Bush campaign’s criticism was “typical for someone entrenched in the professional political class.”
“They attack outsiders because Washington is a giant corrupt bureaucracy and the powers that be don’t want it changed,” Flores said in a statement. “So they do what they know — politics as usual, talk about problems that they never intend to fix, tear down outsiders by scaring voters into thinking an outsider can’t do this job. They’re scared because voters are starting to see that Carly can win this job and do this job. They know she is a leader that will challenge the status quo and take back our government for our citizens.”
Ponnuru chose not to comment on-the-record to the Examiner, but Bush campaign communications director Tim Miller said the campaign is only preoccupied with Bush. Fiorina ranks four positions ahead of Bush in the Examiner‘s most recent 2016 GOP presidential power rankings.
“We’re focused on our own campaign, Gov. Bush’s conservative record and message,” Miller said. “Obviously if debates come up there are engagements, and I think that Gov. Bush has contrasted his conservative record and platform with the liberal track record, platform, that’s been put forth by Donald Trump, so as situations arise we got to run our own campaign.”
In regards to whether Fiorina favored various aspects of Obamacare, she issued a statement about her previous support for healthcare mandates on Thursday.
“Since its passage, I have consistently said that repealing Obamacare is the first thing we have to do to ensure quality, affordable healthcare for every American,” Fiorina said in a statement. “In 2013, I was in an argument on TV in which I once again said, “I think Obamacare remains an abomination.” As part of that argument, I also said that I would agree with the conservative Heritage Foundation’s catastrophic coverage mandate as part of a plan that would ensure those with pre-existing conditions could be covered. Since then, conservative healthcare experts have come up with significantly better alternatives to Obamacare, including Rep. [Tom] Price’s and Gov. [Scott] Walker’s, just to name a couple. To be clear, I believe that we must find a way to cover people with pre-existing conditions — but I do not believe we need a mandate of any kind to do that.”
The Bush policy adviser’s interest in Fiorina’s statements on healthcare could prove to be the opening salvo of a long battle between two candidates fighting for conservative and establishment Republican support.
