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Jeb Bush Makes First Swing Through Iowa After Announcing Presidential Run

Clay Masters
/
IPR
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush takes questions from the audience at a town hall-style campaign event in Pella, Iowa.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was campaigning in Iowa Wednesday, two days after announcing he's running for the Republican party nomination for president. 

His campaign chose small towns for town-hall style meetings. In Washington, Iowa he took questions from the press including one about Pope Francis’ view that a revolution is needed to combat climate change.

“I think Pope Francis is an extraordinary leader of the church whose teachings I try to follow,” Bush says. “It doesn’t need to get more complicated than that. That’s why I go to mass. I don’t go to mass for economic policy or things in politics.”

Bush says there could be a federal role in providing incentives for technology that addresses climate change. but it should be done in a way that ensures there aren't job losses or a hit to the U.S. economy. 

 Then he was on to Pella where after a brief outdoor speech he took questions from the audience including one on immigration.

Credit Clay Masters / IPR
/
IPR
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush held a town hall-style meeting in Pella, Iowa.
0617JebBushPellaweb.mp3
Hear former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's town hall-style meeting in Pella, Iowa on June 17, 2015.

“This is apparently controversial so here goes,” Bush says. “I don’t think 11 million people living in the shadows is appropriate in this great country. I think what we ought to do is stop ignoring the problem.”

Bush says those here illegally should have a path to earned legal status.

He also recapped his week after announcing his candidacy in Miami on Monday.

“I went to the Jimmy Fallon show, that’ll be on my highlight reel the rest of my life,” Bush tells the crowd estimated at more than 500 people. “I slow danced the news. It’s pretty cool. And then I’m here in a state I really love.”

Brenda Kamish was in Pella to shop Wednesday and wound up seeing Bush.

"I was impressed with him, I saw him last night on Jimmy Fallon and I wasn't impressed with him, so this really made my thoughts change,” Kamish says.

Bush was scheduled to campaign Thursday in Charleston, South Carolina but canceled after news of the mass shooting at a church there. 

Clay Masters is the senior politics reporter for MPR News.