Since announcing his presidential candidacy in June, Jeb Bush has made clear his distaste for officials who trade on their connections.
He has assailed the revolving-door culture of Washington, calling for “a little bit of a recession” there to thin the ranks of the permanent political class. He has proposed a strict six-year ban on lobbying for departing members of the House and the Senate.
And he has shown little patience for the euphemisms of the Capitol, using derisive air quotes to describe “government relations” and “government affairs” experts.
“It’s easy for elected officials to lay out standards of performance for others,” Mr. Bush said during a July speech in Tallahassee, where he worked for eight years as Florida’s governor. “But what are the high standards worth if they’re not applied to themselves?”
Yet a review of Mr. Bush’s finances shows that he has built his personal wealth with the help of companies that had business interests with Florida while he was governor, and that singled out his political expertise and government experience as important assets. Roughly half of the $36.8 million he has earned since he left office in 2007 stems from such companies, according to campaign disclosures and government filings.
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Mr. Bush’s financial ties are the focus of a planned 38-page e-book by Peter Schweizer, the researcher who recently chronicled the financial entanglements of the Clinton family in the book “Clinton Cash.” (The New York Times was one of at least three news organizations to receive a copy of the report before its publication. There were no agreements or conditions concerning how the contents would be used; The Times vetted the information and built on it with its own reporting.)
When Mr. Bush departed the governor’s office in 2007, he did not register as a state or federal lobbyist.
But he quickly made the transition back to the business world he had given up for public office — and there were plenty of opportunities awaiting him.
Mr. Bush, working out of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and often in partnership with his younger son, Jeb Jr., was well known for keeping a hectic schedule, juggling commitments as a consultant, a paid speaker, an investor and a board member. The assortment of business engagements led Mr. Bush and his wife, Columba, to attain the wealth that they had long sought. During the summer, Mr. Bush’s campaign estimated the couple’s net worth at $19 million to $22 million.
Last week, Mr. Bush’s campaign released his tax return for 2014, showing that it was his most prosperous year, with income of $8.3 million.
In total, his tax returns over the past eight years showed $36.8 million in adjusted gross income.
Mr. Bush’s spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell, noted that Mr. Bush was a successful businessman before becoming governor. “After leaving office, Jeb returned to the private sector, forgoing a taxpayer-funded state pension and building a successful consulting and investment business,” she said. “Jeb’s record, both in office as Florida’s governor and in the private sector as a successful businessman, is one of integrity.”
A sizable chunk of his earnings is attributable to Mr. Bush’s work with three companies — Tenet Healthcare, Lehman Brothers (later Barclays) and Rayonier Inc. — that had business interests with the state while he was governor.
In April 2007, four months after leaving office, Mr. Bush was named to the board of Tenet, which paid him more than $2 million in cash and stock over the next eight years, according to the company’s public filings. Florida was among Tenet’s biggest markets.
Tenet said in public filings that it “benefited greatly from Mr. Bush’s extensive background in government service, his perspectives on public policy and social issues and his experience as a business leader.”
While Mr. Bush was governor, Tenet operated several private Florida hospitals, which participated in the state’s Medicare and Medicaidprograms. In 2006, Tenet agreed to pay $7 million to settle claims by the Florida attorney general’s office that it had inflated prices to obtain more than $1 billion in excess Medicare payments.
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Mr. Bush, in the summer of 2007,signed a consulting contract with Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street bank. According to his campaign, he was paid about $2 million a year for his services, which at one time included sitting on the board of Lehman’s private equity unit.
Mr. Bush ended up advising Barclays following its purchase of Lehman units in the United States in 2008 after the bank sought bankruptcy protection. Last year, he was paid $2.7 million.
Among the victims in Lehman’s collapse was Florida’s public pension system, which had invested heavily with the bank over the years.
During the summer of 2007, Lehman sold the state pension fund $842 million of mortgage-backed debt, which soon went into default, according to Bloomberg News.
Mr. Bush has denied that as a consultant, he steered Lehman to the pension fund, saying he had no role in Florida’s investments with the bank.
By the end of 2008, Mr. Bush joined the board at Rayonier, a Jacksonville-based forest products company, an appointment that paid him a total of about $1 million by the end of 2014, according to filings in which the company praised Mr. Bush’s “invaluable political expertise” in Florida.
While Mr. Bush was governor, Rayonier negotiated land sales with Florida.
These included the state’s $40 million purchase of 8,465 acres of land and timber as part of a conservation effort in northeast Florida in 2003.
In 2000, during an earlier land negotiation with Rayonier, Mr. Bush, then governor, criticized how Florida arrived at the prices it paid for land, but nevertheless approved a $20 million purchase of property near Jacksonville that the public would be unable to use for 25 years. “Man, I can’t wait to get back into the real estate business and sell property to the state,” Bush said at the time, according to The Associated Press.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush has made ethics reform and concern over political coziness centerpieces of his message, positioning himself — despite his last name — as a figure far removed from the rhythms of Washington.
In June, when he released 33 years of tax returns, Mr. Bush noted that his income had increased “thanks to hard work and experience.”
“But one thing I didn’t do was get paid to lobby or cut deals with the state government I just left,” he said. “That was a line I drew and it was the right one.”
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