fl_gov_bush

JEB BUSH

• Born John Ellis Bush in Midland, Texas; his initials spell "JEB" and the nickname stuck at an early age. He is the second of former President George Bush's five children, and his older brother, George W., is currently the Governor of Texas. He spent most of his childhood in Houston, where his family moved when he was six years old.

• Like his father and his more famous older brother, Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, the exclusive prep school in Andover, Massachusetts. When he was 17, he enrolled in a student exchange program that took him to Leon, Mexico, where he met his future wife, Columba Garnica Gallo.

• Bush received a degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2 1/2 years. After graduating in 1974, he went to work at Texas Commerce Bank but left in 1980 to work on his father's presidential campaign.

• After the 1980 campaign, Bush moved his family to Miami, where his wife's mother lived, and went into business with Armando Codina, a Cuban emigre who owned a real estate investment firm. They built the firm into one of the top real estate businesses in South Florida, although Bush was criticized for exploiting his family's name and ran into trouble when some business associates later got into legal trouble.

• From 1984-86he served as chairman of the Dade County Republican Party, and in 1987, GOP Governor Bob Martinez appointed him to serve as Florida's Secretary of Commerce. He left that post in 1988 to direct his father's presidential campaign in Florida. In 1992, he again ran his fatherÂ's campaign in Florida, one of the few key states his father carried.

• Bush made his first bid for elected office in 1994, when he challenged Governor Lawton Chiles. He posed a serious threat to Chiles and garnered 49% of the vote, losing by 63,940 votes. Since that race, Bush has founded a non-profit organization, Foundation for FloridaÂ'a Future, and laid the groundwork for his 1998 campaign.