Jeb Bush shows off his tough side with likely campaign manager pick, Danny Diaz
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Who is Danny Diaz, Jeb Bush’s expected new campaign manager?
The question unleashes a torrent of descriptions that all point to a take-no-prisoner, rough-around-the-edges type who relishes a fight.
“Tiger,” “lion,” “a hair-on-fire-guy,” and “a [expletive] animal” are just a few of the tamer modifiers in recent news accounts used to describe the 39-year-old son of Spanish immigrants who has been tapped amid a staff shakeup to head the former Florida governor’s presidential campaign, which is scheduled for a launch next Monday.
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The selection of Diaz, who has been with Bush’s campaign this year as a consultant, is seen as a key indicator that the candidate-to-be is shifting to less kinder and gentler approach to his run for the Oval Office.
“I’ve worked with Danny, and he’s a [expletive] animal,” Politico quoted an unnamed “adviser to a rival Republican candidate” as saying of Diaz. “If Danny is capable of transmitting a third of the energy he possesses, it will be a marked improvement over where Jeb had been.”
Bush reportedly took the shocking step of passing over Dave Kochel – a well-known Republican operative who worked on the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential run and who was expected to be his campaign manager – after several scorching news stories, including one where he misunderstood a question about supporting the Iraq war, and feeling he was losing momentum against GOP rivals Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Wallace.
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“Danny’s skill at rapidly moving content and campaign organization makes him perfectly suited for running the day-to-day operations,” said senior Bush adviser Sally Bradshaw in a statement quoted by various news outlets.
Diaz is known for his explosive temper and biting sarcasm.
“Those who’ve worked with Diaz describe him as tenacious — and sometimes overbearing. In political circles, his fiery temper — often used against co-workers and reporters covering the campaigns he’s working on — is widely known,” Politico said.
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Those who’ve seen him in action say he’s simply intensely driven to win.
Steve Schmidt, who advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), depicted Diaz in a Washington Post interview as “the Jim Harbaugh of politics,” comparing the GOP operative to the University of Michigan’s famously competitive football coach. “The degree to which there is a feeling of not having it together, that era is coming to a decisive end.”
This isn’t Diaz’s first experience with the Bush family.
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In 2004, he was the southwest regional press secretary for the Bush-Cheney ’04 presidential campaign and was a member of its Latino outreach staff.
Diaz served as the Republican National Committee’s communication director in 2008, where among his key duties was to highlight deficiencies of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Time Magazine published a story about Diaz in his RNC post titled: “The GOP’s Ambassador of Ill Will.”
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In 2010, he was a senior campaign adviser to Susana Martinez when she ran for governor of New Mexico.
Diaz grew up in the Washington D.C. area, receiving a communications degree from George Mason University.
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