Jeb and Marco here; GOP presidential hopefuls want your vote

Jeb Bush is scheduled Tuesday to deliver a foreign policy address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and fellow Republican presidential candidate and Floridian Sen. Marco Rubio is set to conduct a campaign fundraiser in Long Beach.

Bush’s speech in Simi Valley will focus on how to address “the grave threat of radical Islamic extremism,” according to a campaign aide.

During Thursday’s debate involving the top 10 Republican presidential candidates in the polls, the 62-year-old former Florida governor said, “We need to take out ISIS with every tool at our disposal,” in a reference to the Islamic militant organization also known as the Islamic State.

Rubio will conduct a two-part fundraiser at the Petroleum Club in Long Beach. Tickets for a roundtable discussion are $2,700, the maximum individual contribution for a candidate seeking his or her party’s under federal law.

Admission to a luncheon that follows is $1,000, according to an invitation posted on the website politicalpartytime.org, which tracks political fundraisers.

Like nearly all fundraisers for presidential candidates, the Rubio fundraiser is expected to be closed to reporters.

At 44, the first-term senator is the youngest of the 17 major candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants and would be the nation’s first Latino president.

The visits by the Republicans come one day after a crowd estimated by arena officials at 27,500 people gathered in and around the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, speak for about an hour on domestic and foreign policy issues.

Sanders, I-Vermont, was introduced by actress-comedian Sarah Silverman who said, “I give you, if we’re all very smart and a little bit lucky, the next president of the United States.”

Sanders reminded the audience that, as a congressman, he voted against the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq . Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who leads the polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted in support of the resolution as a senator.

Sanders also repeated his support for the nuclear agreement with Iran and previous calls for public funding of political campaigns; a higher minimum wage; a massive road and bridge project to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure and tuition-free public colleges and universities.

Clinton on Monday announced a plan providing for no student to have to borrow money to pay tuition at a public college. Bush called Clinton’s proposal irresponsible and said it would raise taxes and increase government debt.

“We don’t need more top-down Washington solutions that will raise the cost of colleges even further and shift the burden to hardworking taxpayers,” Bush said.

“We need to change the incentives for colleges with fresh policies that result in more individualization and choices, drive down overall costs and improve the value of a college degree, which will help lead to real, sustained 4 percent economic growth.

Sanders fell about 500 people short of drawing the largest crowd for a 2016 presidential candidate for the third consecutive day.

A rally Sunday night at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, drew 28,000, including those listening to Sanders’ nearly hourlong speech on loudspeakers outside the arena, which is the home court for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, according to Michael Lewellen, the team’s vice president of corporate communications & public engagement.

More than 15,000 people heard Sanders speak Saturday night at the Hec Edmonson Pavilion in Seattle in what was the biggest crowd for any presidential candidate in the 2016 campaign before Sunday, according to the campaign.

“The reason why we are doing well in this campaign is because we are telling the truth,” said Sanders, who would be the nation’s first Jewish president.

“We are talking to the reality of American life today. We are talking about a reality in which almost all of the wealth and income in this country is going to the top 1 percent. We are talking about the United States having more wealth and income inequality than any other major country on Earth and we are going to change that.”

—City News Service