In mid-January, health tech entrepreneur Jonathan Bush announced his campaign to replace outgoing Gov. Janet Mills had hauled in almost $1 million, more than almost the entire field of eight seeking the Republican nomination.
Bush, running as an Augusta outsider despite the legacy of a family with two presidents, has had a different set of problems than the others in the largely unknown field. With President Donald Trump now firmly in charge of a party his family once dominated, 1 in 4 voters in a University of New Hampshire survey last month saw him unfavorably.
His campaign also recently lost a key strategist. But Bush began spending heavily on ads last month and has been doing more retail politics over the past few weeks. He is betting on a focused government-shrinking message and a TV blitz that few others can match.
“Welcome to the end of the beginning of the Bush campaign,” the 57-year-old health tech executive confidently said after a Wednesday event in Augusta.
Bush has reserved $1.2 million in ads so far, according to AdImpact data. His fundraising haul came almost solely from out of state and from a $389,000 loan from the candidate as of December. But he is the only Republican getting on TV with his own cash so far, a major step in the large primary field.
The race is changing as it moves into the home stretch. An outside group funded by Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein has already set aside $1.7 million for ads supporting lobbyist and former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason, who only announced his run in January. Those ads depict Mason as a good partner for Trump.
Fighting Mason hardest for that association is frontrunner Bobby Charles, an attorney and former U.S. official in the early 2000s. Charles has run a shoestring campaign that has generated lots of attention and has been leading surveys, including the UNH one that showed him at 28% to Mason’s 12%. Bush was in fifth place.
Maine Republican strategist Lance Dutson, a veteran of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign who was shepherding the setup of Bush’s operation, confirmed he left the race recently. But the campaign shrugged off any notion that his departure affected operations, noting many of its staffers had helped win elections in Maine and across the country.
The team has hired SRCPmedia, which has run political ads for several candidates across the country, including Collins. The Bush camp is working with her longtime pollster, Hans Kaiser. Bush said he is confident that the next round of polls were likely to show a turnaround.
He still faces major challenges — including primary and potential general election opponents who may point to resurfaced reports of domestic violence during a divorce 20 years ago. In a Facebook video after the Bangor Daily News reported on them in October, he countered the “rehashed story” by noting his strong relationship with his ex-wife.
But Maine Republicans are seeing his campaign more favorably in recent weeks. At a debate earlier this month, he railed against Mason’s idea for a new state tax credit that would help fund Trump’s savings program for children, saying new programs aren’t needed. He also warned the party against embracing abortion limits.
Former Maine House Minority Leader Joe Bruno, a pharmacy executive backing former fitness executive Ben Midgley, another outsider backed by allies of former Gov. Paul LePage, said Bush is a talented and successful businessman who’s “fully capable of being a good governor.” But he suggested many Mainers may “look beyond his ability” in part because of his name.
“Let’s face it, the Bush name is not popular in Maine,” he said. “I do think that plays into it.”
Bush’s harsh criticism of Trump, whom he called “personally troubled” in a 2024 interview, makes him stand out among the field as well. But it could help him in a blue-state general election. State Rep. Josh Morris, R-Turner, predicted voters would evaluate him on his business background and how the candidates would affect their pocketbooks.
Morris, who described Bush as a “tremendous guy” but noted he knows and likes other candidates, added that polls never tell the whole story here. He cited LePage’s dark-horse primary win among a large field in 2010 and Collins’ victory despite leading no public surveys in 2020. Bush’s campaign pointed to past BDN coverage of those surveys in a statement.
“Jonathan Bush is the only candidate for governor who fits that bill, and Bush is also the only candidate with the resources and support to compete and beat the Democrat juggernaut that’s ruining our state,” Eamonn Dundon, Bush’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.