The sentiments on display that afternoon—the militant anti-Castro rhetoric, the exceedingly warm reception from a Cuban-American crowd—were nothing new for Jeb Bush; far from it. In 2016, there will be, for the first time, two politicians of Cuban descent—Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—running for president, yet many Cuban-American power brokers say their loyalty ultimately lies with Jeb. Among those prominent Cuban-Americans who have already endorsed him are Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, former Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (who once called Bush the state’s “first Cuban-American governor”), and Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. “He is a charter member of the Cuban-American community,” Ros-Lehtinen told me recently. “We call him one of our own.”

Curbelo is so far neutral in the race, but like so many Cuban-Americans, he speaks about Jeb with enormous affection. “Especially for a lot of Cuban exiles, Governor Bush is like a son to them,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that. They feel like they saw him grow up. They saw him go from being the son of someone who is very important in politics to a leader that never let anyone down, that has a strong record, humble, someone who is bicultural.”

Hispanic politicians talk with awe about Bush’s fluency in Spanish. Martinez told me about attending a trade mission to Mexico where he watched Bush conduct an entire press conference in Spanish, explaining the details of tariffs and international-trade agreements. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘Would I have known that word?’ ” recalls Martinez, who fled Castro’s regime as a teenager. “We’re talking some nuanced words. It went well beyond the everyday vocabulary you would use.”

But Bush’s facility with Hispanic culture isn’t simply about his mastery of Spanish. Depending on the situation, Bush will use Cuban or Mexican slang and employ the Hispanic “sign language that speaks louder than whatever comes out of your mouth,” says Jorge Arrizurieta, a Miami businessman and longtime Bush friend.