“It is unpredictable as I can recall, but I worry less about it because we’ve changed the calendar and we’ll have a de facto nominee by late April and a convention by late June,” said Charles R. Black Jr., a longtime Republican strategist, referring to the changes made by the Republican National Committee to compress the primary schedule and nominating convention…
Jeb Bush has started reaching out to Republicans in early primary states, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whom he called on election night. And he met with Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s finance director, this year. Yet Mr. Bush has not decided on a bid, and those familiar with his thinking say he will give no indication until next year. Some of his private comments in recent months — musing about the need for a “pain threshold” to run and complaining about a video tracker that the liberal group American Bridge assigned to him — raise doubts about his intentions.
Still, some of Mr. Bush’s confidants have had informal conversations with potential aides. Sally Bradshaw and Mike Murphy, his two closest advisers, have quietly met with campaign lawyers, data specialists and donors. While Mr. Bush was in Washington to attend his education foundation’s conference, Ms. Bradshaw spent days in the capital visiting with a number of Republicans. They included two of the party’s most in-demand strategists after its success this month: Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Liesl Hickey, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
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