Although he’s been aggressively fundraising since January and has been narrowly leading in most polls, former Florida governor Jeb Bush finally announced today that he is entering the GOP presidential race. He delivered his announcement speech at the Miami Dade College Kendall Campus, no doubt selected since improving education has been one of his policy goals. The 90-minute event was heavy on celebrating diversity and attacking the fiscal mess the country has become under Obama. Combating domestic violence was also a strong theme. Bush promised if elected president to increase economic growth to four percent a year and create 19 million new jobs. He referenced his success running Florida, saying, “We made Florida number one in job creation.”

Although he’s now the GOP frontrunner, he’ll have to fight for the nomination. Considered a moderate, he is not well liked by the conservative base, primarily due to his support for Common Core and his efforts to legalize illegal immigrants. Jeb Bush also cannot escape association with his father and brother, criticized by many conservatives for straying from Reagan conservatism.

Jeb Bush’s Life and Record

As a teenager working in a high school program, Bush taught English as a second language in Mexico, where he met his future wife, Columba Garnica de Gallo. They have three children and several grandchildren. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in Latin American Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1980, he moved to Florida to pursue a career in real estate development.

He volunteered on both of his father’s presidential campaigns, in 1988 and 1992, saying his father is “the greatest man I’ve ever met or will meet; I can predict that fairly confidently. It was payback time, simple as that.” His wife is Catholic and he converted from Episcopalianism to Roman Catholicism in 1995. First elected governor in 1999, he became Florida’s first two-term Republican governor, serving until the beginning of 2007.

Since leaving the governor’s mansion, Bush has been quite active in philanthropy and charitable causes. He is the honorary chairman of the annual AT&T Jeb Bush Florida Golf Classic, a fundraiser that benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He has worked with the James Madison Institute, a free market public policy think tank in Florida.

Considered more conservative at the time than his brother, as governor he cut taxes by $19 billion, privatized state jobs and vetoed earmarks he hadn’t approved. In 2002, the Cato Institute labeled him one of the top three governors in the country on fiscal issues. Pro-lifers cheered in 2003 when he pushed a law to get the feeding tube of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo put back in. The court struck it down as unconstitutional. He championed an initiative to end affirmative action in universities and signed an executive order ending preferences in government contracting. He signed a “stand your ground” law, allowing people to use deadly force if threatened.

He describes himself as a “policy wonk” who loves ideas. He created the first school voucher program in the country and greatly expanded school choice, making Florida, with Arizona, one of the top two states in the country for school choice. The test scores of minorities increased substantially as a result of the program. At the same time, he fought against education spending increases.

His record on social issues is more conservative than publicly perceived. The Pulse 2016, a conservative site tracking the candidates on issues, gave Bush an A- on his handling of the Indiana religious freedom bill controversy. While he strongly defended Indiana Governor Mike Pence and the freedom of conscience provision for small businesses, the site reports that he believed “the ‘better approach’ would have been ‘consensus-oriented,’ like the effort in red-state Utah, where gay rights advocates and the Mormon Church negotiated the particulars of an anti-discrimination bill.”

Bush has been attacked by Democrats and the media recently for standing by remarks he made in a book of his about single mothers. In his 1995 book, Profiles in Character, Bush said,”One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. … Shame is one of the great regulators of conduct.” When questioned about the statements, he said his views had evolved since then, but reiterated, “The country has moved in the wrong direction — the 40-plus percent out-of-wedlock birthrate and you think about this from the perspective of children, it puts a huge, it’s a huge challenge for single moms to raise children in the world that we’re in today.”

On the other hand, he now takes more liberal views than he did as governor. He won’t sign a pledge not to increase taxes, likely related to his father promising not to do so then having the pledge backfire on him when he did. In 2004, Bush supported giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. He co-wrote a book in 2013 on immigration with libertarian lawyer Clint Bolick, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution. In it, he advocated giving illegal immigrants legal status, though not citizenship. He also suggested reducing the levels of familial migration, or chain migration, and instead increasing HB-1 visas to bring in more skilled workers. In what many viewed as a fumbled attempt to distance himself from his brother’s Iraq War last month, he said he would not have launched it knowing what we do now.

Will there be a third Bush presidency?

Bush has some advantages in pursuing the Republican nomination. Since almost all the candidates in the Republican race are conservatives, they are massively splintering the conservative base vote between them all.  There are only a couple of moderates — namely George Pataki and Lindsey Graham — for Bush to share moderate votes with,  a tremendous advantage. Additionally, governors tend to do better in presidential races, due to their previous executive experience, something members of Congress — like most of his opponents — are lacking.

Does the Bush name help or hurt him? Since he’s leading everyone else, the net effect overall must be positive. On the one hand, many associate the name with big spending and bailouts. On the other hand, some conservatives think it’s his turn, having preferred him to George W. Bush back when the elder Bush son decided to run for president. Notably, his new campaign logo only contains the word Jeb with an exclamation point; Bush is missing.

Republican presidential candidates leading at this stage have frequently gone on to win the primary. That being said, although he’s the frontrunner, he’s barely the frontrunner. CNN notes that he’s taking the strategy of the tortoise, not the hare. Bush knows his best chance as the candidate in the lead is to play it cautious and not make any big mistakes.  However, aides privately admitted to CNN that he is a bit rusty as a campaigner, having been out of office for several years.

Bush has the best fundraising of the Republican candidates, having raised around $100 million for his Super PAC “Right to Rise” since January. Much of the establishment is behind him, which means money, but times have changed. Now Super PACs are able to take in unlimited contributions and propel candidates like Rick Santorum.

GOP moderates do well in the New Hampshire primary, but his brother and father both did so-so there. He won’t have to worry about placing poorly in Iowa’s straw poll — viewed as unfavorable to establishment candidates — so many candidates pulled out of it this year that it’s been canceled.

Unless some of the lesser conservative candidates drop out of the race, Bush has a good chance at winning the nomination. However, polls show Paul and Rubio perform better than he does against Clinton, and he’s doing about as well as Huckabee against Clinton. Unlike those candidates, he won’t be able to best Clinton with the “political dynasty” argument. Candidates like Rubio have started making inroads into the establishment money, and there are rumblings that Mitt Romney, who was the only candidate beating Bush in polling a few months ago, may enter the race later this year.

As he himself emphasized in his announcement speech, it isn’t any Republican candidate’s turn. Rather, the race is every candidate’s test. The man with the name and the money and the lead may still go home at the end of the primaries. And if he doesn’t, he may not get past Hillary on his way to the White House.