Bush’s reluctance to declare himself a candidate or even that he’s exploring a run, which enables him to sidestep campaign finance rules, allows him to continue raising unlimited sums of money for the super PAC, which could have its own policy shop and serve as the primary message machine, walled off from Bush himself and his actual campaign.
“There’s a worry that this is setting them up for a number of legal challenges,” a Florida-based donor said. “There’s some freedom allowed by this but there’s also a lot of arrogance because, even if they think they’re on firm legal ground, we all know the intent of the law is not to have presidential campaigns being run out of a super PAC. It’s untested, it’s risky — there’s that chance that it blows up, that some unforeseen legal challenge actually sticks.
“And the optics are horrible. If he wins the nomination this way, Democrats will seize on the tactics as evidence that Jeb Bush thinks he can play by his own rules. It’s the same playbook we’re trying to run against Hillary, which would be out the window.”