By Achal Mehra

Is Bobby Jindal nimble enough to survive the political minefields ahead?

Chances are that most American Indians are unfamiliar with Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, until recently assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the highest ranking Indian American in the Bush administration.
Jindal, 31, resigned on Feb 21 from the federal government and has since announced that he is making a run for the governor of his home state of Louisiana.
Jindal has an enviable reputation as a superstar in Louisiana. Gov. Mike Foster appointed him to the cabinet as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in 1996 when Jindal was only 24. He was tapped a few years later, first for medicare overhaul at the federal level and then as the youngest president of the University of Louisiana System in Baton Rouge.
Jindal’s greatest strength is the support of outgoing Republican Gov. Foster, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term. Foster has been boosting his candidacy and has leaned heavily on Jindal to run.
Raves Foster: “I have never met anyone with that kind of mind. Still haven’t.”
The governor even commissioned a private poll to assess whether Jindal’s ethnicity and age might derail him. According to the governor, not with the majority of the electorate.
Notwithstanding the heavyweights lined up behind Jindal, he is by no means a shoo-in in a state with a long history of religious and racial strife.
Jindal converted from Hinduism to Catholicism many years ago. But Louisiana has elected only protestant white men in the last century. It is also the state where David Duke made a credible run for statewide offices.
Jindal joins a crowded field of 12 candidates, including seven on the Republican side. The primary campaign will likely require raising $3 million, no mean sum. Jindal has already hit the phones and lined up some big buck donors, again thanks to the prodding of his political mentor Foster. Whatever the outcome, Jindal is eyeing the biggest political prize ever sought by a member of the Indian American community. Although Indians have proven exceedingly successful in the professional and business spheres in the United States, their pickings at the political table have been slim.
Jindal may well pry open the political arena for Indian entrepreneurship. If Indians can match their success in the technology, medical, hotel and other business and professional sectors, the political future of the community may prove very exciting. Thus far, Indian involvement in politics has largely been limited to fund-raising. A handful of Indians have run for state houses and some, such as Kumar Barve in Maryland, have succeeded well. But the political novice Jindal is the first Indian to have a serious shot at the governor’s office.
There is an irony and a harsh political reality in Jindal’s political affiliation. He is Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic community. Indians have long had an affinity for Democrats, who in turn have a far stronger record with minorities and immigrants. Indeed, in the areas of race and immigration, the history of the GOP has been abysmal, even outrightly hostile.
Jindal will have to navigate himself around these thorny political questions with the same nimbleness with which he mastered health and medicare issues. Thus far, at least, his reputation — and political prospects — have been built around his seemingly apolitical genius as a policy wonk. Whether that alone is enough to survive the political minefields of a major gubernatorial campaign will only be known in the next few months.

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