Presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton gave dueling speeches at the Urban National League’s annual conference on Friday. (Photos: AP; Getty Images)
One week before Jeb Bush jumps into the Republican free-for-all primary on a debate stage with nine other candidates, he faced off Friday with the likely Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, as the two of them gave dueling speeches to the National Urban League.
The highly anticipated showdown between Clinton and Bush, at the Urban League’s annual conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., yielded a contrast in strategies.
Clinton chose to make an attack on Bush the centerpiece of her speech, but Bush largely ignored Clinton and focused his remarks on what he did to help minorities and urban populations during his time as governor of Florida.
Clinton went after Bush aggressively over his recent comments that he wants to “phase out” Medicare. Bushsupports making changes to the current system, such as means-testing benefits, because he believes it to be fiscally unsound. Clinton and her campaign have seized on Bush’s words because his comment made it sound like he was talking about ending the 50-year old health-insurance program for older Americans and because Democrats believe the changes he backs will fundamentally alter its character.
Clinton singled out Bush by ridiculing one of the central slogans of his campaign, which is that every American has the “right to rise.”
“I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a ‘right to rise’ and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare,” Clinton said. “People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care.”
Clinton continued her riff on Bush’s “right to rise” motif and used it to extend her critique to parts of Bush’s record as governor and her support for raising the minimum wage.
“They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you cannot seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote,” Clinton said.
A group supporting Clinton, Correct the Record, quickly followed her speech with a press release arguing that the “stand your ground” gun law Bush signed in Florida “disproportionately targeted African-Americans” and that Bush “pushed discriminatory policing and sentencing laws at every turn,” “vetoed grants to benefit African-American-owned businesses,” and created an educational standard called “One Florida” that “led to a huge drop in African American enrollment at state universities.”
Bush himself mentioned the “One Florida” program during a brief conversation following his remarks with Urban League president Marc Morial, acknowledging that the program to end race-based admissions policies in Florida’s state schools was controversial. But, he said, it actually increased minority enrollment rates in the state’s schools.
There were 33,000 African-American college students in Florida in 1999, compared to 44,000 in 2013, according to Politifact. But because Florida’s overall university enrollments have grown at an even faster pace, the percent of black students has decreased slightly, from 14 percent to 13 percent. And some in Florida have expressed concern that the black population at the state’s flagship schools — the University of Florida and Florida State University — has shrunk as many African-American students have enrolled in smaller regional schools.
Beyond addressing One Florida, Bush did not respond to Clinton in his speech or in the question-and-answer session with Morial. He spoke at length about his record on education in Florida, where he expanded school choice and charter schools. He called the current public education system the source of “the worst inequality in America today.”
“If we don’t create an education system that allows young people to reach it, we’re setting them up for a lifetime of failure,” Bush said. “I want to work with the Urban League movement to end this injustice once and for all.”
Bush touted his removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Florida state capitol, and said that there was a 43 percent increase in black Floridians hired and appointed to the state judiciary system, that the number of minority-owned businesses in the state tripled during his two terms in office, and that “the number of black and Hispanic students passing AP exams increased four times over.”
Bush spokesman Allie Brandenburger said Clinton’s criticisms of Bush were “more false, cheap political shots to distract from the fact that Secretary Clinton has no record of accomplishment to run on this race.”
While Bush chose to ignore Clinton at the Urban League, he went after the former U.S. Senator and secretary of state later in the day for her speech in Miami supporting President Obama’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with the Cuban government and end the embargo against trading with the island nation.
Bush said Clinton’s position was “a retreat in the struggle for democracy in Cuba.” Clinton, meanwhile, tried to use the issue to cast Bush and other Republicans as “stuck in the past.” That language was noticeable push back to Bush’s own critique of Clinton during their debate over Uber and the sharing economy. Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is also running for president, have used that issue to argue that Clinton and the Democrats are themselves “stuck in the past.”
The only other Republican presidential candidate to address the Urban League meeting was retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Morial said that a number of Republicans were invited but declined. Two other Democrats also made appearances: former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
All three Democratic presidential candidates spoke about and named several of the black Americans who have been killed by police in high-profile incidents in the past year. Bush did not mention the names of victims such as Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and others.
Discussing the racial unrest of the last year, Clinton issued “an urgent call for people to search their own hearts and minds.”
“This is about all of us looking into our hearts, examining our assumptions and fears, and asking ourselves: What more can I do in my life to counter hate and injustice? How can I make our country a better, fairer place?” she said.
Bush made a similar call, noting that this year has seen “things break down … in anger and violence.”
“When all these issues I’ve discussed make it harder and harder for people to imagine a hopeful future, then it’s easy to see why there’s anger and disillusionment,” he said. “It is up to all of us to work diligently to rebuild that trust. That happens one person at a time. One politician at a time. One police officer at a time. One community leader at a time. It begins with respect, dialogue, and the courage to reach out in peace.”
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