Another Winner from Winn Parish
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Another Winner from Winn Parish Bobby Jindal's race for governor of Louisiana. by Stephen F. Hayes Winnfield, La. In many ways, Bobby Jindal's appearance in a small meeting room on Main Street at...
...If Jindal, the son of immigrants from India, is to win the Louisiana governor's race, he will need the enthusiasm he generates at his events to translate into votes...
...There were homemade baked goods and there were red-white-and-blue balloons...
...And Jindal, the second-term Republican congressman running for governor again after losing narrowly four years ago, gave a rousing speech filled with lines sure to appeal to some of the most conservative voters in America...
...And the minimum sentence for online predators is two years...
...In Louisiana, they confiscated guns from more than 1,000 law-abiding citizens...
...He says this standing in front of a huge mural featuring the three governors who went to Baton Rouge from Winn Parish: Huey Long, O.K...
...In 2003, Democrats aired an us-versus-them ad in the final days of the runoff campaign that proved decisive...
...Murmurs of disbelief come from the small crowd...
...Julie Vezinot, the party's spokeswoman, insisted that it wasn't meant to draw attention to Jindal's race...
...It would be much better if we found out they were all living in the same place—in Angola, far away from all children...
...He did not want to talk about it and says that national reporters and commentators seem to spend a lot more time on his ethnicity than Loui-sianans do...
...But while Jindal's work was well known to opinion leaders in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, to voters in outlying areas he was unfamiliar and different...
...There's a vigorous "Damn right...
...Allen, and Earl Long...
...The members of the audience share his indignation, and he reminds them that he has won the endorsements of the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association, the NRA, and the Fraternal Order of Police...
...When I point out that those same analysts believe he under-performed in rural areas in 2003 in part because of his race, he scoffs...
...When he started what many regarded as a quixotic campaign for governor, he was 32 and drawing 3 percent in the polls...
...then Louisianans will go to the polls en masse on October 20...
...A leather-faced man standing near the back of the room offers an angry Bobby Jindal harrumph...
...Our most important priority has to be protecting our children...
...Which explains why he has spent four years getting acquainted with these voters...
...That's not an advantage in a state that gave David Duke 44 percent of its vote in 1990...
...Jindal is different from those former governors in another way, too: His skin is brown...
...I think it is important to let people know who he is, . . . to say this is what he actually is rather than the image he presents to the public...
...The Louisiana Democratic party for months insisted on using Jindal's given name, Piyush, in its press releases...
...It's his real name...
...Clergy from around the state spoke out in defense of Jindal, including many individuals who had hosted him at their churches and who had discussed his faith with him at some length...
...He is relatively short and extraordinarily thin—not surprising for someone who sometimes wakes up at 4 a.m...
...His first opportunity to win comes this month in an open primary...
...The crowd shouts its approval...
...The sheriff shakes his head: perverts...
...National Democrats cried foul, and were right to do so, when Republicans tried using Barack Obama's middle name—Hussein...
...If Jindal gets more than 50 percent of that vote, he's governor...
...In many ways, Bobby Jindal's appearance in a small meeting room on Main Street at the center of this rural town of5,000 was a typical campaign event...
...There are more attacks coming...
...The ad featured a stark warning: "Wake Up, Louisiana...
...Says one Republican strategist, "If David Duke did well in a parish, Bobby did poorly...
...In 2003, Jindal won fi 33 percent of the first-round vote and faced Democrat Kathleen Blanco (who took 18 percent) in the runoff...
...In Mississippi, they said: 'If you loot, we'll shoot,'" he says approvingly of that state's response to post-Katrina crime...
...It is not race-baiting," she told Newhouse newspapers...
...It is a passing reference in a relatively unimportant part of his speech...
...There was the eager campaign aide who clapped loudly at all of the candidate's applause lines in order to encourage others to do the same...
...Jindal says...
...The backlash was swift, in part because the ad was brazenly dishonest even by the low standards of campaign attacks...
...Jindal is small next to those larger-than-life figures...
...If he doesn't, the two top vote-getters will face each other in a runoff next month...
...Jindal had come from nowhere to qualify for that runoff...
...LSU is ranked number one in the country," Jindal says, in his soft Louisiana accent...
...A television ad that aired in heavily Protestant northern and central Louisiana accused Jindal of intolerance toward non-Catholics in writings dating back to the mid 1980s...
...If it weren't for the occasional strand of gray hair on his head, he could pass for 16 years old...
...Do you know that the minimum sentence for a convicted child molester in LouiStephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard...
...He wrote articles that insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants," said the narrator...
...Although several recent polls have shown him with a lead large enough to give him a victory in the primary, Jindal's campaign >_ is preparing to intensify its work | through November...
...Although polls showed him ahead by some 11 points in the days leading up to the election, he lost 52-48 percent...
...His election to the House of Representatives in 2004 raised his public profile, and he has spent countless Sunday mornings traveling to churches throughout rural Louisiana talking about his conversion to Catholicism...
...We're going to beat Florida this weekend and beat them again in Atlanta," he adds, referring to the site of the 2007 SEC championship game...
...But it reinforces the fact that despite his brown skin and his Ivy League degree and his Rhodes scholarship, Bobby Jindal is just like them...
...In the four years since his defeat, Jindal has worked hard to change that...
...They brag about the fact that you can go on the Internet and see block-by-block where these child molesters live," says Jindal, preparing the audience for the payoff of his tough-oncrime campaign—a positive reference to "The Farm," Louisiana's often-controversial state penitentiary...
...to exercise...
...The unspoken message is simple: I'm just like you...
...At a campaign stop in Ville Platte, the crowd includes lots of people wearing the purple and yellow of the LSU Tigers...
...In an interview aboard his campaign bus as we traveled between parishes last week, I asked Jindal about race...
...siana is one year...
...I don't think race is the reason I lost," he insists...
...The more familiar voters were with me, the better we did...
...He had an impressive resume—he was Louisiana's secretary of health and hospitals at 24 and president of the University of Louisiana system at 28...
...Some voters are actually casting their ballots this week, in the state's first election featuring early voting...
...There were "Bobby Jindal" banners on the walls and enthusiastic volunteers in yellow "Bobby Jindal" polo shirts...
...As the screen showed a young, dark Bobby Jindal, the narrator intoned: "They hope we don't wake up until it's too late...
...He nudges the man next to him, who is wearing a shiny gold-star badge on his belt...
...Democrats have tried to use Jindal's ethnicity against him in this race, too...
...That's smart...
...from the far side of the room...
...Those trips and the familiarity they bred came in handy this summer when the Louisiana Democratic party launched an attack on Jindal and his faith...
...I see Bobby Jindal as presenting a fagade...
...And Jindal continues with a monumental promise: He will end the corruption that has characterized Louisiana politics for generations...
Vol. 13 • October 2007 • No. 5
