Jeb Bush made a hiring splash on Friday as his PAC tapped opposition research guru Tim Miller for what will likely be a top position in his potential 2016 presidential campaign.
Miller served as Jon Huntsman’s press secretary in his failed 2012 presidential bid, then made a name for himself in the 2014 cycle as executive director of America Rising PAC, a big money GOP firm dedicated to digging up dirt on Democratic candidates and promoting it in the press. Miller, whose hire was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will serve as a senior adviser to Bush’s Right to Rise PAC and is pegged as the presumptive communications director for Bush’s 2016 campaign should the former Florida governor enter the race.
“Tim is one of the most respected communicators in the nation,” Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for Bush’s Right to Rise PAC, told msnbc. “His counsel will be critical to Governor Bush as the Right to Rise PAC works to support conservative candidates and conservative causes across the nation in the coming months.”
America Rising was a breakout star in the 2014 cycle, where it dispatched trackers to follow Democratic candidates around the country and helped sink Senate hopefuls like Iowa Democrat Bruce Braley, who was hurt early by a video released by the group in which he derided Senator Chuck Grassley as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” The firm is also known for its social media presence — rather than operate as an invisible force, it tries to disseminate damaging information about Democrats with memes and gifs.
More recently, America Rising has been focused on undercutting Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, a skill set that should prove handy should Bush win the Republican nomination and face off against the former Secretary of State.
Benjy Sarlin