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Jindal Leads Polls in La. Governor's Race
story.news.yahoo.com
By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana goes its own way in politics, veering forward, backward or crawfish-wise.
Now, the state of the populist Longs — Huey and Earl — of flamboyant and now jailed Edwin Edwards and of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is cracking the political mold again.
A son of immigrants from India, a Republican whose given name was Piyush but who calls himself Bobby, is topping polls in the governor's race and astonishing political connoisseurs.
"Louisiana is still a racist state," veteran native political consultant Raymond Strother said recently, explaining why he thought it unlikely the moderately dark-skinned Bobby Jindal could be elected.
That was the conventional wisdom when Jindal, a 32-year-old Rhodes scholar with a reputation as a healthcare policy whiz kid, left the Bush administration seven months ago to run for governor.
But Jindal's resume, combined with an in-your-face, hard-right conservatism, has neutralized race as an issue.
The Oct. 4 election is an 18-candidate open primary, a free-for-all unique to Louisiana. To win the election, a candidate must draw more than 50 percent of the vote. If no one gets that majority, a runoff election will be held Nov. 15.
If Jindal, protege of popular incumbent Gov. Mike Foster, comes out on top, he would break a Deep South color line that has stood since Reconstruction.
And it is whites who are seeking to put him in office.
With radio spots mocking gun control and extolling the Ten Commandments, hostility to affirmative action and an indulgent eye toward the teaching of "creationism" in public schools, Jindal is chasing the same conservative voters who supported the extremist Duke. That is a substantial bloc: Duke scored a majority of white males in at least one statewide run.
In a state where 30 percent of the voting age population is black, polls show Jindal with virtually no black support.
"I think Bobby Jindal doesn't get any support in the black community because he's trying to outconservative the conservatives," said state Sen. Donald Cravins, who is black. "He's trying to move to the far right."
Jindal faces a field of veteran politicians — including Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, both Democrats, and some ex-legislative leaders, Democrat Randy Ewing and Republican Hunt Downer — whose positions are safely middle-of-the-road: low taxes, better schools, fiscal discipline.
The exception is a former one-term congressman, Democrat Claude "Buddy" Leach, who is crusading to tax big oil and raise wages.
Recent polls have shown Jindal and Blanco more or less even with each other and with the percentage of undecided voters, at 18 to 22 percent of the vote. Ieyoub is running third.
Jindal has a fast-talking style that bewilders but impresses listeners. In debates, while other candidates may struggle, Jindal's words fly in tightly organized bursts, like automatic gunfire, cramming the minute-long debate segments.
"There are four things we need to do," Jindal began at a recent debate, rapidly enumerating a plan to rebuild New Orleans, the substance of which was less striking than his lightning delivery.
Also playing well in Louisiana is that this immigrant's son who has made very good is imbued with a fervent belief in the American dream.
"I'm against all quotas, all set-asides," he said at a recent forum. "America is the greatest. We got ahead by hard work. We shouldn't respond to every problem with a government program."
For religious, rural Louisiana, he's a teenage convert to Catholicism from his parents' Hinduism.
Foster, who can't succeed himself after two terms, made Jindal secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals at the age of 24, then appointed him head of Louisiana's university system. Jindal later became an assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Department when Bush entered the White House.
Jindal won't talk about his fund-raising, but with $1.3 million on hand, according to the latest campaign finance reports, he is far in front of the other candidates.
Some of that money has come from the Indian-American community around the country.
"We all are proud of his accomplishments," said A.K. Mago, chairman of the Greater Dallas Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites). "For us living in other states, it's up to us to support him financially. The community as a whole has done fund-raisers for him in every major city."
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