Bush Forms Fund-Raising Committee

President Bush took the first formal steps toward launching his reelection bid Friday, authorizing the establishment of a committee to collect campaign funds on his behalf and naming Texas businessman Robert Holt as his campaign treasurer.

The moves were designed to lay the groundwork for an intensive fund-raising bid in which Republicans hope to collect as much as $26 million by the end of this year to bankroll the 1992 campaign by Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle.

Bush said in a letter to the Federal Election Commission that he was “not yet formally declaring my candidacy for the Republican nomination,” but White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that such an announcement is still expected.

Federal law requires that presidential candidates form a campaign committee before they can raise significant amounts of funds. With fund-raising so important in political campaigns, most politicians establish such committees long before they announce their candidacies.

But despite the designation of Holt as treasurer, the rest of Bush’s campaign structure remains largely a mystery.

Although Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher is widely expected to resign at the end of the month to become campaign chairman, party professionals say that only Bush knows who will fill the rest of the lineup.

Bush is expected to wait until January to make a formal announcement of his candidacy, following a precedent set in 1984, when then-President Ronald Reagan ran for reelection.