I feel obligated to cover this story because it’s the first real “use your kid as a surrogate to fix an error” situation of 2016, even though the “Hot Scoop” from the New York Times seems a bit bland (though, admittedly, not as bland as it’s BLOW THE LID OFF OF THE 2016 RACE scoop of last week, that Scott Walker, who is allergic to dogs, would be “running against tradition” by possibly not having a dog in the White House, though Clinton campaigned with a cat, Socks, and the Obamas have a hypo-allergenic Portugese Water Dog because someone in that family also has the dastardly pet allergy.
Anyway, back in 2009, Jeb Bush “accidentally” checked the “Hispanic” box on his voter registration form.
Likely Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush, who was popular among Spanish-speaking voters while Florida governor, marked himself as “Hispanic” on a 2009 voter registration application, The New York Times reported on Monday.
The newspaper posted a fuzzy copy of the form, which it said it obtained from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. The circle marked “Hispanic” was checked. The next circle said “White, not Hispanic” and was not checked.
“My mistake! Don’t think I’ve fooled anyone!” Bush wrote on Twitter on Monday, responding to a message from his son calling him an “honorary” Latino.
It’s not exactly Elizabeth Warren trying to claim Native American ancestry to qualify for minority status in the higher education employment line. As far as Florida voter registration law is concerned, the “race and ethnicity” portion of the form is for data collection puproses only, so while he may have unfairly skewed his family’s personal profile, he didn’t technically commit perjury. And while the “oversight” may have made for some interesting exit polling, if he also claimed it to people seeking post-election data, it’s probably the least terrifying oversight in Florida voting history.
At any rate, Jeb Bush immediately got one of his kids, who is at least partly Hispanic, to take him to task on Twitter over it, which is smart, if unlikely to protect him from questions about the incident later. Though with Jeb Bush, there’s probably much bigger fish to fry.
