Jeb Bush campaign deliberately omits surname

Jeb Bush launched a Republican presidential bid last night by asserting his commitment to the “most vulnerable in our society,” an approach targeting the broader American electorate even as he faces questions about his policies from conservatives in his own party.

Six months after he got the 2016 campaign started by saying he was considering a bid, the 62-year-old former Florida governor formally entered the race with a speech and rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade University, an institution selected because it serves a large and diverse student body that’s symbolic of the nation he seeks to lead.

“My core beliefs start with the premise that the most vulnerable in our society should be in the front of the line and not the back,” Bush said in a video featuring women, minorities and a disabled child aired at the event before his announcement speech later last night.

“What we need is new leadership that takes conservative principles and applies them so that people can rise up,” he said.

The Bush campaign has unveiled a new logo that features his first name with an exclamation point — Jeb! — a branding decision that conspicuously leaves out the Bush surname, perhaps underscoring that while it is a name that commands respect from the GOP establishment, it also has drawbacks, including his brother’s difficult Iraq war legacy.

Bush joins the crowded Republican campaign in some ways in a commanding position. The brother of one president and son of another, Bush has likely raised a record-breaking amount of money to support his candidacy and conceived of a new approach on how to structure his campaign, both aimed at allowing him to make a deep run into the GOP primaries.

However, on other measures, early public opinion polls among them, he has yet to break out. While unquestionably one of the top-tier candidates in the GOP race, he is also only one of several in a capable Republican field that does not have a true frontrunner.

In the past six months, Bush has made clear he will remain committed to his core beliefs in the campaign to come — even if his positions on immigration and education standards are deeply unpopular among the conservative base of the party that plays an outsized role in the GOP primaries.