Bobby Jindal

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana's 1st district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2005
Preceded by	David Vitter
Personal details
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Supriya Jolly Jindal

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a Louisiana politician. Jindal was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives on November 2, 2004, from Louisiana's First Congressional District (map), based in the suburbs of New Orleans.

He was re-elected to Congress in the 2006 election with 88 percent of the vote in the 1st district. He intends to be a candidate for Governor of Louisiana in the October 20, 2007 election.

Biography

Jindal (rhymes with "kindle") was born in Baton Rouge to recently arrived Indian immigrants who were attending graduate school. According to family lore, Jindal adopted the nickname Bobby after watching The Brady Bunch.

Jindal was a Hindu but converted to Catholicism as a teenager. He has also offered testimony before Baptist and Pentecostal congregations since the beginning of the 2007 campaign season.. He attended high school at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. In 1991, he graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, with honors in biology and public policy. Afterwards, he received a master's degree in political science from New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After Oxford he joined McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm.

At the age of twenty-four, he was appointed Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals by Republican Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr.; he served from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 1999, he was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He was also the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System between 1999 and 2001. Newly-elected President George W. Bush appointed him Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation; he held that post from 2001 to 2003.

He is the only Indian-American currently serving in Congress, and the second in congressional history after Dalip Singh Saund, a Democrat who represented California's 29th District from 1957 to 1963.

He was chosen by Scholastic Update magazine as "one of America's top 10 extraordinary young people for the next millennium."

He was India Abroad Person of the Year 2005

In 1997, he married Supriya Jolly (born 1972). The couple has three children, Selia, Shaan, and Slade.

On Tuesday, August 15, 2006, Jindal assisted in delivering his third child when his wife awoke, in labor. The child was born before ambulances had time to respond.

2003 campaign for Governor

In the 2003 jungle primary for governor of Louisiana, Jindal came in first place with 33 percent of the vote. He received endorsements from the largest paper in Louisiana, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the newly-Democratic mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, and the outgoing Republican governor, Mike Foster. In the second balloting, Jindal faced the outgoing Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Lafayette, a Democrat. Despite winning in Blanco's Lafayette, he lost many normally conservative parishes in north Louisiana, and Blanco prevailed with 52 per cent of the popular vote.

Political analysts have speculated on a myriad explanations for his loss. Some have blamed Jindal for his refusal to answer questions about his record brought up in several advertisements, which the Jindal Campaign called "negative attack ads". Others note that a significant number of conservative Louisianans remain more comfortable voting for a Democrat than for a Republican. Still others have mentioned the race factor, arguing that many voters are uncomfortable voting for a person of color.

Despite losing the election, the run for governor made Jindal a well known figure on the state's political scene. He formally declared his intention to run again on January 22, 2007, and is the leading Republican candidate for the Louisiana gubernatorial election of 2007.

House victory

A few weeks after the gubernatorial runoff, Jindal decided to run for Louisiana's 1st Congressional District. The incumbent, David Vitter, was running for the Senate seat being vacated by John Breaux. He moved to Kenner to run for the congressional seat. He was endorsed by the Louisiana Republican Party in the primary despite the fact that Mike Rogers, also a Republican, was running for the same seat. The 1st District has been in Republican hands since a 1977 special election and is widely considered to be the most Republican district in Louisiana. Although Democrats have a plurality in registration, the 1st tends to vote for socially conservative candidates. Jindal also had an advantage because his campaign was able to raise over a million dollars very early in the campaign, making it harder for other candidates to effectively raise funds to oppose him. He won with 78 percent of the vote.

He was elected Freshman Class President and appointed to the House Committee on Homeland Security, the House Committee on Resources, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Furthermore, he was made the Vice-Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks.

2007 Run for Governor

On Monday, January 22, 2007, Jindal announced his candidacy for Governor of Louisiana in the upcoming election.

Despite claiming that he would not kick off his campaign until the end of the legislative session because he did not want to micromanage Louisiana government he has been criticized for both campaigning during the legislative session and micromanaging the Louisiana legislature and the Governor during the current legislative session.

Polling data shows Congressman Jindal with an early lead. However, another poll funded by Republican candidate for Governor John Georges claims that over 75% of Louisiana voters have not made a final decision on who they are supporting for Governor.

Positions on selected issues

Congressman Jindal has stated that he is "100% against abortion, no exceptions"[4]. During his 2003 run for governor he distinguished himself from Kathleen Blanco, who is also pro-life, by stating that he supports an abortion ban without exceptions for the life of the woman, the health of the woman, rape, or incest. His definition of abortion differs from the medical community as it only includes procedures that target the embryo or fetus, a definition that exclude procedures, such as a salpingectomy, that do not target the embryo specifically but may result in what the medical community would call an abortion. He has stated that he would allow emergency contraception, which some pro-life groups consider morally equivalent to abortion. He has voted with the Republican Party on all abortion related issues.

When the plan was submitted to the voters, Jindal voted for the "Stelly Tax plan", an idea, named for former state Representative Vic Stelly of Lake Charles, which was supposed to reduce the tax burden on a majority of Louisiana taxpayers. Whether or not the "Stelly Plan" is giving the desired results is still hotly debated statewide. Early Republican challenger Steve Scalise challenged Jindal on his vote for this tax plan before Scalise dropped out of the congressional race in 2004.

Jindal supported a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, and the Real ID Act of 2005. Jindal has an A rating from Gun Owners of America. He was the congressional sponsor of the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act.

He is a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee. In 2006, Jindal voted with the Republican Caucus 97% of the time during the 109th Congress. In 2007, Congress.org, a nonpartisan group, ranked Jindal 432 out of 439 in terms of overall "power" in the US House during the 110th Congress. According to one of the ranking's criteria, Jindal was penalized for running for governor.

Jindal also supports co-payments in Medicaid.

In 2006, Jindal sponsored the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act (H.R. 4761), a bill to eliminate the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling over the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, which prompted the conservative watchdog group Republicans for Environmental Protection to issue him an environmental harm demerit. Jindal's 2006 rating from that organization was -4, among the lowest in Congress. The nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters also censured Jindal for securing passage of H.R. 4761 in the House of Representitives; the group rated his environmental performance that year at 7%, citing anti-environment votes on eleven out of twelve critical issues. Jindal's lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters is 7%. Despite claims that Congressman Jindal's bill was successful H.R. 4761 was actually replaced by S 3711 (known as the Domenici-Landrieu Fair Share Plan). The Senate version was the actual legislation that was passed by both houses of Congress, word for word, and signed by President Bush. Irrespective of the semantical name change, Jindal was credited as being one of the "main forces" in ensuring the bill's passage.

External links

• U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal official House site
• United States Congress. "Bobby Jindal (id: j000287)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Federal Election Commission — Bobby Jindal campaign finance reports and data
• On the Issues — Bobby Jindal issue positions and quotes
• OpenSecrets.org — Bobby Jindal campaign contributions
• Project Vote Smart — Representative Bobby Jindal (LA) profile
• SourceWatch Congresspedia — Bobby Jindal profile
• Washington Post — Bobby Jindal voting record
• Bobby Jindal for Governor official campaign site
• Bobby Jindal's Power Ranking by Congress.org

Articles

• Little India Interview Little India, December 2004
• Bobby Jindal, a whiz kid takes the reigns of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospital Little India, June 1996
• SIFY — Newsmakers: The People Behind Today's Headlines, 2003 brief profile
• Bobby Jindal Saves Louisiana — Profile article from pro-Jindal website
• Jindalisbad.com, anti-Jindal website