The Jeb Bush campaigns wants to attract millennials, but donations to Millennials Rising, a pro-Jeb Super PAC, overwhelmingly come from old men.
The Super PAC has raised about $55,000 based on its FEC filings, and 95 percent of that has been donated by men 61 years and older, according to The Intercept.
One man, billionaire Robert A. Day, has given 91 percent of Millennials Rising’s total funding.
As a Super PAC for millennial outreach, there’s nothing strange about older rich donors bankrolling the group. The original name of “Millennials for Jeb” sounds strange when few millennials have donated to the group, even if the group was founded and headed by 22-year-old C. W. Lucas Agnew.
Bush has struggled to attract millennials to his campaign. He’s garnered about 6 percent of Republican-leaning millennials, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey. His awkward missteps, from begging an audience to clap to hugging a voter who says Bush could swing his vote, haven’t helped his campaign generate youth support.
He could use millennial support, too. Polls for next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary have Bush in fifth with 9.8 percent support and trailing Marco Rubio and John Kasich, seen as his main competitors for the “moderate” or “establishment” vote.
Even as he’s released a higher education plan, something that only he and Rubio have done in the Republican field, along with a tax plan to spur economic growth with a millennial emphasis, millennials have followed their parents in writing off the Bush campaign. If something doesn’t change soon, Bush could exit the race for the Republican nomination soon.
