By DPA
Washington/New Orleans : Bobby Jindal is an overwhelming favourite in Saturday’s first-round election for governor in Louisiana, the Gulf state devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The 36-year-old Republican wunderkind, hoping to capture the governor’s mansion in a traditionally Democratic state, could be the first-ever politician of Indian descent to become governor of one of the 50 US states.
Polls have shown Jindal, a social conservative, at or above the 50 percent threshold he would need to win outright in Saturday’s first round, a so-called jungle primary free-for-all, a rarity in US elections and one of many quirks in Louisiana politics.
If none of the 12 candidates on Saturday’s ballot – Jindal is the only Republican alongside five Democrats and six independents – wins a majority, the top two finishers will face each other in a Nov 17 runoff.
Four years ago, he won a plurality with about 33 percent in the first-round election for governor, but lost a close election to Democrat Kathleen Blanco, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Jindal reportedly blamed the loss on his relatively poor performance among white, Protestant conservatives in rural northern Louisiana. Race might have been a factor.
In the same 2003 election, Jindal had strongly courted African-Americans, who are 30 percent of Louisiana’s population and typically vote with the centre-left Democrats.
In the end, he succeeded in garnering only about 10 percent of the black vote, the same fraction that typically goes to the centre-right Republicans.
Winning the race left Blanco in charge of the state during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans. The botched response at all levels of government and plodding recovery in south Louisiana eroded Blanco’s popularity, and in March she announced her decision not to seek re-election.
Jindal was born Piyush Jindal in Baton Rouge, the state capital, to a Hindu Indian family. As a youth, he started calling himself Bobby in an attempt to assimilate, and as a teenager converted to Roman Catholicism.
He studied biology and political science in college and won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to study at New College in Oxford, England. Jindal went to work for the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
In 1995, the 24-year-old Jindal was appointed head of the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals, cementing his reputation as a public policy “wonk.”
He served President George W. Bush as assistant secretary of the US Department Health and Human Services from 2001-03, until his first bid for governor.
After losing that race, Jindal ran for Congress in 2004, easily winning in a conservative district and cruising to re-election in 2006.
In his second bid to become governor, Jindal has benefited from a Democratic Party fractured by multiple candidates in Louisiana’s open primary.
His campaign has not pursued African-American voters with the same fervour as four years ago, but polls show he could approach 20 percent with them, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported this week.
It remains unclear if that is solid support or mere name recognition at a time when rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina has kept many voters from focusing on the race.
In an illustration of Louisiana’s unpredictable political environment, racial undertones in this year’s campaign have even taken a back seat to religion.
The Louisiana Democratic Party tried to portray Jindal as anti-Protestant, based on an article he once wrote for a Catholic publication. But the attack “allowed Jindal to cast himself as an innocent victim of religious prejudice,” Times-Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace wrote.
Louisiana’s political culture has long rated as the most corrupt in the country. Generations of state politicians have been labelled by outsiders as loveable rogues, and Louisiana campaigns are often won or lost on the basis of populist appeals.
Despite his local drawl, Jindal’s popularity derives less from a colourful personality than his reputation as a policy-driven prodigy.
In a newspaper endorsement, the Shreveport Times welcomed that image: “Jindal’s confident and competent command of topics, his energy, his relative youth, even his second-generation immigration roots can dispel the spectre of a dysfunctional Old South, a ghost that appears too routinely.”