http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/19louisiana.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Highlighting mine.
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An Improbable Favorite Emerges in Cajun Country
Lee Celano for The New York Times
Bobby Jindal, left, an Indian-American, is favored to win the primary
election for Louisiana governor by enough to avoid a runoff.
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By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: October 19, 2007
FRANKLINTON, La., Oct. 17 - An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from
India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate for
Louisiana's next governor in Saturday's primary election. It would be
an unlikely choice for a state that usually picks its leaders from
deep in the rural hinterlands and has not had a nonwhite chief
executive since Reconstruction.
But peculiar circumstances have combined to make Representative Bobby
Jindal, a conservative two-term Republican, the overwhelming
favorite. Analysts predict Mr. Jindal, 36, could get more than 50
percent of the vote in the open primary, thus avoiding a November
runoff and becoming the nation's first Indian-American governor. If
he fails to win a majority, he would face the next-highest vote
getter in the runoff.
Louisiana Democrats are demoralized, caught between the perception of
post-hurricane incompetence surrounding their standard bearer, Gov.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who is not running for re-election, and
corruption allegations against senior elected officials like William
J. Jefferson, the congressman from New Orleans.
Leading Democrats begged off the governor's race, and Mr. Jindal's
opponents are from the second tier, trailing so badly in polls that
Mr. Jindal has ignored most of the scheduled debates among
candidates, leaving the challengers to take grumbling verbal shots at
his empty chair.
The prize is not necessarily an enviable one: Louisiana is the
nation's poorest state, measured by per capita income; one of its
unhealthiest; the worst in infant mortality; and the least educated.
It is last in attracting new college-educated workers. Tens of
thousands of people remain displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the police
department in New Orleans still operates largely out of trailers, and
neighborhoods are still trying to rebuild.
"The storms didn't cause all of our problems - they revealed a lot of
our problems," Mr. Jindal said in a brief interview this week. "It's
an incredible opportunity to change the state."
But he is not a natural fit for Louisiana. The state likes its
governors to know the fundamentals of the Cajun two-step, speak some
derivation of French patois, and at least get to a duck blind,
regularly and publicly. But Mr. Jindal has labored assiduously to
overcome the disadvantage of being a non-Cajun, Rhodes Scholar policy
wonk whose given name was Piyush, and who has a penchant for 31-point
plans.
He is a born-again Roman Catholic who has suggested that teaching
intelligent design as an alternative to evolution may not be out of
place in public schools, favors a ban on abortion and opposes
hate-crimes laws. Conservative views aside, the slightly built
congressman is anything but a backslapping good ol' boy.
He lost to Ms. Blanco in 2003 largely in places like this, Washington
Parish, a hardscrabble rural area 70 miles north of New Orleans,
where voters openly expressed unease four years ago about opting for
someone of Mr. Jindal's race. In areas where the Ku Klux Klan leader
David Duke won in the 1991 governor's race - here and in the deeply
conservative parishes of north Louisiana - Mr. Jindal lost.
But by Wednesday, three days before Mr. Jindal's second attempt at
the governor's mansion, he was greeted here, if not with great
warmth, at least without alarm. The congressman, tossing souvenir
cups from a fire truck in a town parade, was met with shouts of "Hey
Bobby!" from the rural whites lining the route.
Mr. Jindal picked out familiar faces in the crowd, greeted the
sheriff like an old friend and posed for a picture with man sporting
a Confederate flag tattoo.
For months, the congressman has cultivated the rural areas where he
lost in 2003, "witnessing" in remote Pentecostal churches,
neutralizing his image of being hyperqualified - head of the state
health department at 24, head of the university system at 28 and
under secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services at 30
under President Bush - that did not help him the last time. In one
recent debate, Mr. Jindal boasted that he had made 77 trips to north
Louisiana since announcing his candidacy.
Insinuations about his excessive intellectual capacity are still
being made. "It's not going to be about the smartest person in this
race," Walter Boasso, a Democratic state senator and one of Mr.
Jindal's opponents, said recently. But such remarks do not seem to be
catching on with voters apparently weary of bumbling at the Capitol
in Baton Rouge and at City Hall in New Orleans.
This time, Mr. Jindal is aiming his multipoint plans at ethical
reform in state government, schools and economic development, and
attacks on his wonkishness have fallen flat. Mr. Jindal kept a low
profile after Hurricane Katrina, but opponents are not attacking him
for that either, perhaps because few others in Louisiana's political
class have stepped up.
Mr. Jindal told a group in Jefferson Parish this week that he had
"150 specific proposals," after rattling unflinchingly through a good
many in a 12-minute speech.
He makes a particular case for a "war on corruption," as he puts it,
in Baton Rouge, proposing to tighten financial disclosures on
lobbyists and legislators and to prohibit business relationships
between legislators and the state. He promises to build up
infrastructure like ports, to devote attention to research
universities and promote technical training. He hardly mentions Mr.
Bush, a sharp contrast to four years ago when he often boasted of his
connections to the president.
Past governors have charged into Baton Rouge promising reform only to
founder in the change-resistant Legislature. Mr. Jindal will most
likely face long odds too, if he fulfills the near-universal
prediction that he will come out on top._______________________________________________
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