George H.W. Bush is Voting for Hillary Clinton

Former President George H.W. Bush is bucking his party's presidential nominee and plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November, according to a member of another famous political family, the Kennedys.

Bush, 92, had intended to stay silent on the White House race between Clinton and Donald Trump, a sign in and of itself of his distaste for the GOP nominee. But his preference for the wife of his own successor, President Bill Clinton, nonetheless became known to a wider audience thanks to Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

On Monday, Townsend posted a picture on her Facebook page shaking hands next to the former president and this caption: "The President told me he's voting for Hillary!!"

In a telephone interview, Townsend said she met with the former president in Maine earlier today, where she said he made his preference known that he was voting for a Democrat. "That's what he said," she told POLITICO.

Asked about Townsend’s post, George H.W. Bush spokesman Jim McGrath in an email replied, "The vote President Bush will cast as a private citizen in some 50 days will be just that: a private vote cast in some 50 days. He is not commenting on the presidential race in the interim."

"...sources with knowledge of the conversation told CNN they were surprised and disappointed that she had publicly shared a private conversation with the former president."

Kennedy Townsend declined to comment through a spokesman at the Rock Creek Group, where she works as managing director. She later took down the Facebook post. A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The former Republican president's decision to vote for a Democratic nominee would be a stunning political move — and the news of his thinking comes just 49 days from the election, and less than a week before Clinton and Trump square off in their first debate. Bush's potential embrace of Clinton would also represent a new chapter in the complicated, three-decade-old relationship between the two most prominent families in American politics.