Jeb Bush campaign officials and a top fundraiser are pushing back aggressively against a story by conservative talk show host Erick Erickson in which he claims that the Bush campaign will stop paying staff on Saturday due to lack of funds.
Citing “sources close to the Bush campaign,” Erickson wrote that there was a phone call on Wednesday night in which the news leaked out that the Bush campaign was out of cash.
After Erickson’s story reverberated through the political world on Thursday morning, Bush campaign spokesman Tim Miller tweeted:
Al Cardenas, a longtime Bush insider and senior fundraiser, told The Hill — with his tongue firmly planted in cheek — that he was amazed that “Erick has better information than I do.”
“I am traveling on Saturday to Nevada to help oversee that effort, and we have staff waiting for me,” Cardenas said in a telephone interview. “And nobody’s been notified about this information.
“It would come as a surprise to [Bush campaign] staff that Erick’s been notified ahead of them.”
Another senior source familiar with the Bush fundraising and campaign machinery described the story as “complete bullshit.”
“F—— Marco Rubio got a third place in Iowa and a fifth place in New Hampshire, and he’s trying to drive us out of the campaign. It’s ludicrous,” the source said.
“It’s a f—— civil war [with Rubio], that’s what it is … Jeb Bush is a proud dude. … We are not going to announce to the world that the campaign will finish on Saturday.”
Cardenas said that all the Bush campaign needed to do in Saturday’s South Carolina primary to justify its ongoing existence is finish ahead of John Kasich and “neck-and-neck” with the Florida senator.
“We are only fighting for one thing at this early stage of the game,” Cardenas said. “And that is to be the third option” behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
“The comments about the finances of the campaign are way overblown,” Cardenas said. “In my opinion, the campaign is where it needs to be to meet its obligations, but like every other campaign it needs to replenish.”
Emily Benavides, a Bush spokeswoman, said, “Erick Erickson’s a great guy. Clearly the report is 100 percent inaccurate, and it’s something that is being pushed around by a desperate competitor.”
Rubio is currently in third place in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, 6 points ahead of fourth-place Bush.