BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The nation’s political center cuts directly between super-wealthy Greenwich and high-achieving Chappaqua, N.Y.

Separated by just 13 miles, these sought-after suburbs lay claim to the two most powerful political families of the 21st century: the Bushes and the Clintons.

The communities are poised for a rivalry of the highest magnitude, with Greenwich serving as a kind of political piggy bank for one 2016 White House hopeful and Chappaqua as home base for the other early favorite.

The competition transcends 203 vs. 914, the New Haven vs. the Harlem lines or the Merritt vs. the Saw Mill River parkways. It’s Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton.

“This is really quite an anomaly what’s going on here,” Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, said. “It’s really quite remarkable.”

To have presidential contenders from competing political dynasties with connections to two towns so close together is unprecedented and creates a “locus of energy,” he said.

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Bush embarked on an exploratory bid for president earlier this month with a fundraiser in Greenwich – his father’s hometown – that netted $500,000 for his political action committee, Right to Rise.

“This was a really seminal point in the development of the story,” said Craig Stapleton, a Bush relative who served as an ambassador under President George W. Bush. “The enthusiasm was spectacular. Jeb was surprised. I think the political world was surprised. The exploratory pocket book just got a lot bigger.”

A DIFFERENT WORLD

Head northwest on King Street in Greenwich and then take Route 120 to Chappaqua, where the road is, perhaps fittingly, also King Street, and there is far less fawning over the Bushes. This hamlet, put on the map by newspaper trailblazer and 1872 presidential candidate Horace Greeley, is Clinton country.

“Here, they’d fall on foul ground,” Gray Williams, 82, the longtime town historian, said of the Bushes. “It’s a different world.”

From the political leanings of their respective populations to the display of wealth, the contrasts are stark between liberal Chappaqua and reliably Republican Greenwich.

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“I know of one hedge fund manager who lives in all of (Chappaqua),” the silver-haired and Yale-educated Williams said from behind the wheel of his Subaru. “Compared to Round Hill Road (in Greenwich), it’s not the same.”

But make no mistake, the appetite for an entrant in the Oval Office sweepstakes is just as ravenous in the adopted hometown of the former first lady, who is eying nearby White Plains, N.Y., for her campaign headquarters.

“Everybody’s very excited and waiting with a little bit bated breath to hear what she’s going to decide,” said Grace Bennett, editor and publisher of Inside Chappaqua magazine.

In 2012, when Clinton was secretary of state, she invited Bennett to visit 11 countries with her as part of the traveling press corps.

“(Chappaqua) really is on the cusp of being a world famous town given the Clintons, if it isn’t already,” Bennett said. “There is sort of an expectation that we will be in the public eye as a community.”

A FINANCIAL CAPITAL

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Greenwich is expected to play a much different, albeit crucial, role for Bush, who, like his brother, former President George W. Bush, has kept an arm’s length from the Connecticut ancestral roots of the Bushes. The town is defined in dollar signs and branches on the family tree.

Home of the late Bush family patriarch Prescott Bush Sr., who served in the U.S. Senate and was the grandfather of Jeb Bush, Greenwich is a magnet for candidates on both sides of the political aisle. They are drawn to town because of its concentration captains of industry and bundlers of campaign cash. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, grew up on Grove Lane and attended Greenwich Country Day School.

“There are only a finite number of communities in America that will be that supportive of either a Democrat or a Republican,” said Edward Dadakis, who spearheaded the 2000 local campaign of George W. Bush. “I think Jeb’s style of Republicanism plays well here. This area is very fiscally conservative but socially moderate.”

In Greenwich, 39 percent of the electorate is Republican, which is down from previous generations and is divergent from Chappaqua. On the home turf of the Clintons, who are often spotted at the Memorial Day parade and at Chappaqua institutions such as Lange’s Little Store and Le Jardin du Roi, 50 percent of registered voters are Democrats.

“We really feel she’s part of the town,” said Jean Dodson, 86, a registered Democrat and 40-year resident of Chappaqua.

Williams, the town historian, said on a brisk drive past the dead-end lane that the Clinton home is located on, “The Clintons they chose us. They picked Chappaqua.”

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ABOUT THE FUTURE

In Greenwich, Bush swooped in under the cover of night for a Jan. 7 kickoff reception for his leadership PAC where he was said by multiple people in attendance to have dismissed concerns that “Bush fatigue” could become a drag on his candidacy.

Bush took a few veiled swipes at Clinton, not mentioning her by name, but telling the roomful of Republican contributors that she would have to answer for the foreign policy blunders of the Obama administration and would not be able to run on “90s nostalgia.”

“He said (campaigns are) not even about the present, let alone the past,” said Gian-Carlo Peressutti, a former press secretary and aide to George H.W. Bush in his post-presidential life who attended the fundraiser. “They’re always about the future.”

The guest list at the $5,000 per person reception had a heavy dose of financial services executives and appointees of both Bush presidents, including former Comptroller General David Walker, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden.

“Most people at this point in the race think they know who the opponent is going to be,” Peressutti said.


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