467 days to go…

Happy Wednesday, Millennial Memo readers. We’re t-minus one week and one day away from kicking off debate season, so yours truly is escaping for a little R&R this weekend before starting the mad dash to Election Day. If you missed last week’s Millennial Memo, be sure to check it out here — you won’t be sorry. And if you know anyone that should be receiving this memo, encourage them to sign up here.

BUSH’S UBER EDUCATION: Politico’s Eli Stokols reports that “Bush’s outreach to 20- and 30-somethings is still that of a 62-year-old … But as he told reporters before being whisked away in another Uber, he’s having encounters that are shaping his views everyday, referring to a college student in Los Angeles who gave him a ride. ‘Because of Uber, he’s going to go to medical school debt-free,’ Bush said. ‘We have $1.2 [trillion] of student loan debt; we have people who are stuck because we haven’t reformed our higher education system. Uber’s giving that person a chance to start out and fulfill his dream.’”

CLINTON SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR MET WITH NH EDUCATION OFFICIALS TO TALK COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY: WMUR reports that Clinton “campaign senior policy adviser was in New Hampshire for a private meeting with top higher education officials about ways to increase college affordability. Campaign officials said Ann O’Leary met Thursday with Todd Leach, chancellor of the state university system; Ross Gittell, chancellor of the state community college system; Mark Rubenstein, president of Granite State College; Amy Schwartz, associate vice chancellor of the state university system; Ed MacKay, director of the state Department of Education Higher Education commission, Susan Huard, president of Manchester Community College; and Lizbeth Gonzalez, vice president of student affairs at Nashua Community College.”

CLINTON CAMP PUSHES INVESTING IN PELL GRANTS AND COMBATTING STATE DISINVESTMENT: The WMUR piece also cites a Clinton campaign official discussing policy solutions following O’Leary’s meeting. “Since New Hampshire students graduate with the highest average student loan debt in the nation, Clinton has heard often from Granite Staters about it, a campaign official said. The campaign official said Clinton has backed expanding Pell Grants and lowering college costs and believes the ‘crisis’ of student loan debt is slowing small business creation and innovation. According to the Clinton campaign official, the New Hampshire officials told O’Leary that in 2011, when Republicans controlled the New Hampshire Legislature, major cuts to public education [were] made.”

TO REDUCE STUDENT DEBT, CHRISTIE CALLS FOR MORE TRANSPARENCY IN COLLEGE COSTS: At a recent ‘Tell It Like It Is’ town hall at the Liberty Tap Room in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) was asked by “Juan Soto Jr. of Johns Island… how [he]… would help the nation’s large Millennial generation get jobs and succeed. Christie said the nation must do more to control student debt, partly by increasing transparency in college costs. ‘My generation, we’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘It’s your generation I’m worried about.’” (Post and Courier, July 20, 2015)

WSJ REPORTS BUSH BUNDLER A FORMER SALLIE MAE BOARD MEMBER: According to the Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Stewart and Rob Barry, “Rick Hohlt, one of eight lobbyists who reported bundling contributions for Jeb Bush during the first two weeks of campaigning, said his relationship to the family dates to when he was a GOP volunteer in 1972 who drove former President George H.W. Bush–the father of Jeb and George W.–to a couple events. The elder President Bush later appointed Mr. Hohlt to the board of directors of the student-loan company Sallie Mae.”

SWALWELL CITES O’MALLEY’S STUDENT DEBT PLAN AS MOTIVATION FOR ENDORSEMENT: Last week, former Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD) picked up his first endorsement from a sitting member of Congress — second term Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Explaining his endorsement in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Swalwell writes: “millennials need O’Malley. Forty-one million young Americans are mired in $1.3 trillion in student loan debt, leaving them stuck in financial quicksand and preventing or delaying them from taking the job they want, buying a house and starting a family… His bold and visionary plan would allow students to refinance student loans, link minimum payments to incomes, freeze public tuition rates, restore state higher education funding, increase Pell Grants, and expand and modernize the need-based federal work-study program.”

KASICH OPEN TO STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS IN EXCHANGE FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE: At one of Governor Kasich’s inaugural New Hampshire town halls, voter “Dan Kelley, of Stratham, asked what [the Governor would] do about helping college graduates get out from under mountains of student loans, suggesting some sort of community service in exchange for forgiveness, Kasich said: ‘I don’t know yet. … I cannot make the promise that all of the sudden I’m going to write it off. … ‘Maybe you just said something that made some sense.’ Kelley’s wife, Marianne, approved of Kasich’s response. ‘He was open (to the idea). That’s what I liked,’ she said.” (USA Today, July 27, 2015)

MEASURING UP MILLENNIALS: A new CNN/ORC poll from July 22-25, 2015 found Clinton leading her Republican rivals among registered Millennial voters (18-34) by sizable margins. Clinton leads Bush by a 27-point margin compared to Sanders’s 12-point lead over the former Florida Governor. Here is how the frontrunners are matching up (MoE +/-8.5%):

Clinton 63, Bush 36

Clinton 66, Trump 31

Clinton 66, Walker 31

Sanders 54, Bush 42

Sanders 66, Trump 32

Sanders 61, Walker 35

Where the Presidential Candidates Stand on Student Debt, MarketWatch, Jillian Berman

Obama’s Higher Ed Home Stretch, Inside Higher Ed, Michael Stratford

Pell Grants to Be Restored for Prisoners, The Wall Street Journal, Joshua Mitchell & Palazzolo

Discover Penalized for Allegedly Cheating Student Loan Borrowers, The Huffington Post, Shahien Nasiripour