New Orleans
THE LOUISIANA governor's race is interesting and nationally important for one reason: Bobby Jindal. He's the Republican candidate in the November 15 election and is probably the most unconventional major party candidate in the country. Louisiana often produces exotic political creatures like Edwin Edwards and David Duke, both now in jail, or even the current Republican governor Mike Foster, best known for his political incorrectness. But Jindal is as different from them as one could get. Rather than a good old boy or a scoundrel, he's a 32-year-old policy wonk who's never before run for office. He's a graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island and an expert on health care. He's an Indian American whose parents moved to Baton Rouge just before he was born. And Jindal is a thoroughgoing conservative.
It's a stretch to liken him to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but let's go there anyway. Both have immigrant backgrounds. Both are Republicans who don't quite fit the party mold. Both are reformers. Both decided to run not in response to a groundswell, but because they wanted to. Both promise to turn around states in decline, economically and demographically. Schwarzenegger is now governor-elect of California. Jindal has at least a 50-50 chance of winning the Louisiana governorship. If he does, Jindal will join Schwarzenegger as a new Republican star whose emergence reflects an increasingly diverse party.
Yes, there are differences. Schwarzenegger was blessed with an unpopular governor, Democrat Gray Davis, to challenge in a recall election. Not so Jindal. After two terms
(which is the limit in this state), Foster remains popular and indeed is Jindal's most prominent supporter. On his radio show last week, Foster zinged the Democratic candidate, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Blanco, by suggesting her husband will be the power behind the throne if she's elected. Jindal was embarrassed by this and renewed his plea for Foster to keep quiet about the campaign. Blanco tried to drum up a sympathy vote by complaining she now has two opponents to run against, Jindal and Foster.
Schwarzenegger had celebrity, but Jindal has an extraordinary life story. His given first name is Piyush, but at age 4 he decided to change it to Bobby. In high school, he abandoned his parents' Hindu faith and converted to Catholicism. (His father is an engineer, his mother an assistant secretary in the Louisiana state labor department.) By the time he graduated from Baton Rouge High School, Jindal was a Republican. When he got to Brown--an eight-year medical program had attracted him--he naively asked about joining the College Republicans. There was no chapter at Brown. The Republican club Jindal subsequently helped found grew, he says, to 300 members, a surprisingly large membership for a liberal Ivy League school.
His post-Brown career has been dizzying. Instead of pursuing medicine, Jindal studied at Oxford for two years as a Rhodes Scholar, worked the next two years for McKinsey, the business consulting firm, and at age 24 returned to Baton Rouge to take over, at Foster's urging, the mammoth Department of Health and Hospitals. There, he transformed a $400 million deficit into a $220 million surplus. He soon moved to Washington for a year as executive director of the federal commission on reforming Medicare. One of his bosses was Democratic senator John Breaux of Louisiana, who has endorsed Blanco. Then he took over the University of Louisiana system of colleges for two years before joining the Bush administration in 2001 to draft a Medicare reform plan.
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