Jeb Bush’s nascent campaign took an unexpected turn Monday when he tapped a hard-charging Republican communications expert to run his White House bid over the strategist many had expected would lead the way.
Bush staff said Monday that Danny Diaz, 39, a veteran of three previous presidential races with a sharp and aggressive style, would lead the former Florida governor’s campaign, which is expected to be announced June 15.
David Kochel, the former director of Iowa efforts for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, had been expected to win the top post on the Bush team, but was instead tasked with directing initiatives in key primary states as chief strategist.
Diaz’s aggressive communications style is well established. Republican staffers and experts said he would be equally as good at forcing out a finely honed Bush campaign message as he would be at tearing down opponents’ messaging.
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Messaging, in fact, has at times been a problem for Bush, who stumbled first over his support for a controversial “religious freedom” law in Indiana, and later over a question of how he would have handled Iraq in 2003, had he been in his brother’s shoes.
But what is not yet clear – and poses a possible risk for Bush, who sits near the top of a very crowded pack of contenders – is whether a communications expert can be the management expert needed to put Bush in the White House.
“I think there is a lot of attention paid to Jeb, obviously. He’s going to have a bull’s-eye on his back,” said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who worked with Diaz on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “A guy like Danny, he’s not going to shrink from the pressure.”
Diaz was a deputy communications director on 2008 nominee John McCain’s campaign, a communications director of the Republican National Committee and a senior adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. Since then, he has worked for the political strategy firm FP1, which was co-founded by two other Republicans with strong presidential campaign resumes.
“David can best position us for success by playing a key leadership role focusing on how Jeb wins primaries, caucuses, and ultimately the general election and 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.
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Diaz is also something of a taskmaster, ensuring everyone in the room knows what their jobs are on a given day and how they’re expected to execute them, according to people who have worked with him in the past. He sleeps about four or five hours a night, according to one person who knows him, then jumps back into the job.
“You have to have both short-term and long-term focus on your messaging, but also, you have to have a focus on being very disruptive of your opponent’s news cycle,” said GOP strategist Kevin Madden, also a CNN contributor.
“If I had a laminated list of three people who are extremely good at that part of it, Danny Diaz would be on it,” he said.
Operatives were careful, however, to make clear they were not knocking Dave Kochel’s political skills along the way. Many Republicans who have worked with Diaz in the past have also worked alongside Kochel.
“Dave Kochel is one of the best operatives that we have,” Madden said. “It could be that what they’re looking to create is a bit of a thunder and lightning team.”
Diaz and one of the firm’s co-founders, Jon Downs, had been working with Bush’s leadership PAC; Downs will also join Diaz on the campaign.