Jindal won the endorsement of the state's most prominent black politician, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as well as other luminaries such as C.O. Simpkins of Shreveport, a '60s civil rights activist who once was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vice president in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The result is that recent polls show Jindal with the support of more than 10 percent of black voters -- at least twice the usual total for a Republican candidate here.
"If you close eyes and you didn't see the 'D' or the 'R,' how would you determine which one belongs to which party?" said Donald Cravins, a black state senator from Lafayette who cannot remember ever supporting a Republican for statewide office before -- but is clearly impressed with Jindal. "But [Jindal] has left the race issue out of it all together and he's not tried to entice white voters by alienating black voters. And when you look at him you think he's a minority, too."
Yet at the same time, Jindal has managed to appeal to deeply conservative Louisianans like Vallot, the handyman, a self-confessed Bubba who twice voted for white supremacist David Duke in the '90s -- and said he'd vote for him again if he could. (Duke currently resides in federal prison.) "It's hard to believe I'm even going to look at this man -- at first he almost looked to me like an Iraqi," Vallot said, speaking of Jindal. "But I tell you, he talks so smart, and he's hitting the hammer right on the nailhead."
In fact, Jindal is not from another country; he was born in Baton Rouge shortly after his parents, originally from the Punjab, immigrated to the United States. Named Piyush by his parents, Jindal, when barely a toddler, changed his name to Bobby, taking the name from the youngest of the "Brady Bunch" boys.
After a star-studded academic career, Jindal so impressed the new Republican governor of Louisiana, Mike Foster, that at the age of 24 he was named the state's secretary of health and hospitals and put in charge of a $6 billion annual budget.
Foster, 73, who by law is leaving office after eight years, anointed Jindal as his chosen successor earlier this year. At the time Jindal was a top health official in the Bush administration.
He started at single digits in the polls, but by the fall he had vaulted into the lead in the state's quirky open-to-all-parties primary. Running against five candidates, each old enough to be his parent, Jindal finished first with 33 percent of the vote in the first-round vote in early October.
Blanco ran second, but, collecting support from the Democratic also-rans, she began the runoff campaign with a substantial lead over Jindal. Jindal quickly closed the gap in the polls and then crept ahead. |
