Jeb Bush wants people to be 'patient' about his unpopularity in 2016 polls

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published 10 June 2015

In interviews with reporters outside his Berlin hotel Wednesday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said that he's restructuring his campaign team, including naming Danny Diaz as his campaign manager, because of "the magnitude of the journey" — not because he's lagging behind other candidates in the polls.

Bush went on to brush off the notion that he was less popular than other Republican contenders in the 2016 presidential race:

You start wherever you start, and you end a long way away from where we are today, so I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this. I mean, y'all cover this kind of in the here and now; and who's winning and who's losing is important, and I respect that. But if you have a strategy and you think about it over the long haul is the better approach, at least for me; and so I'm pretty confident that we're in a good position, for sure. [Politico]

Recent polls have shown Bush falling behind other GOP candidates in Iowa. But Bush said Wednesday that "there's no fifth-place... kind of mentality" in his mind.