WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush invested about $91,000 and turned a small profit in 1995 from an Enron partnership, tax records show.
The enterprise now is controlled by a former Enron president who has been helping the Florida governor raise money for his re-election bid.
Bush's investment in Enron Liquids L.P. three years before he became governor is the only known investment by a member of President Bush's immediate family in an Enron partnership.
Investigators have been looking at some of Enron's privately traded partnerships as contributors to the company's collapse. Enron Liquids, however, was publicly traded and is not part of the investigation.
Jeb Bush's investment brought him a $7,000 profit, according to his 1995 tax return.
"It was an investment for less than a year, and it was done long before last year's bankruptcy," the governor said this week.
President Bush said last month that his mother-in-law was among Enron Corp. stockholders who lost money on the failed company — about $8,100.
Spokeswoman Katie Baur said Thursday the Jeb Bush investment was chosen for him by an investment advisory firm.
Democrats eager to defeat the president's brother in the fall election are trying to make an issue of his ties to Enron.
In a state whose pension fund lost more than $300 million in the collapse, Bush's fund-raising trip to the Houston home of former Enron president Richard Kinder "rubs in the face of people who lost their life savings," the chairman of the Florida Democratic Party said last month. The Bush camp said it saw no problem, since Kinder left Enron in 1996.