Jindal Might Avoid Runoff for La. Gov

BATON ROUGE — Four years after he lost a heated battle for governor, Rep. Bobby Jindal is well ahead of the pack in a repeat run that carries a different kind of drama: Can he get enough votes to win outright and avoid a runoff?

If he gets more than 50 percent of the vote in Saturday's primary, the 36-year-old, Oxford-educated son of Indian immigrants will become Louisiana's first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction and the youngest U.S. governor in office.

The Republican's prospects have brightened thanks to three years of congressional experience, a splintered Democratic field and an incumbent whose political fortunes were done in by Hurricane Katrina.

Polls have shown Jindal has the support of nearly half the state's voters, and no one else is even close in the field of a dozen candidates.

"I personally think that Bobby Jindal will take it in the first round," said Pearson Cross, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette political scientist.

Under Louisiana's open primary system, all candidates for governor are running against each other, regardless of party.

Jindal lost to Democrat Kathleen Blanco in 2003, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but has run as a sort of quasi-incumbent since the governor ended her re-election bid earlier this year. Blanco has been sharply criticized for the state's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the recovery effort will remain a central issue for her successor.

Jindal "was seen as the person who just barely lost to this governor that a lot of people now have second thoughts about," said Bob Mann, a former communications strategist for Blanco and now a professor at Louisiana State University. "That certainly helped establish him. It certainly got him to the leading position when the race started."

Just 32 during his first gubernatorial run, Jindal by then already had served as Louisiana's health care secretary, president of one of its university systems and an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Bush. After losing to Blanco, he easily won a vacant congressional seat in 2004 and coasted to re-election last year.

He talks of the need for ethics reform in a state marred by a longtime reputation for corruption, and he campaigns as a conservative who wants to rein in government spending and cut business taxes. He ran ads equating two of his opponents to corrupt clowns.

A victory Saturday would be a rare trip to statewide office for a minority in the South — in a state that 16 years ago famously saw a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, in a runoff for governor. Duke lost that race.

Jindal avoids any discussion about his ethnicity. At a Thursday night debate, Jindal sidestepped a question about whether he thought his Indian-American background was an impediment in his political career.

"People want to make everything about race. The only colors that matter here are red, white and blue," he said.

Three major candidates are jockeying to force Jindal into the Nov. 17 runoff, including two Democratic state politicians and a multimillionaire independent who has never held elected office. All three have pressed hard to court black voters and have split endorsements among the state's black political leaders.

None has come close to matching Jindal's fundraising prowess. He has raised more than $11 million. Democrat Foster Campbell, a fiery populist and public service commissioner from northwest Louisiana, is second in fundraising, with less than $2 million.

Democrat Walter Boasso, a state senator from hurricane-ravaged St. Bernard Parish, and independent John Georges, a New Orleans area businessman, have brought even less to their campaign coffers from donations. But the two men, both millionaires, have poured their personal wealth into their campaigns.

Mann said Jindal has been helped by "anemic opposition" and Democrats' failure to unite behind one candidate.

Political analysts think Jindal's chances of winning without a runoff hinge on black voters, who make up 29 percent of registered voters in Louisiana and have historically voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. Polls have indicated many black voters are still undecided in the governor's race.

"If there is a large African-American turnout across the state, that could spell a runoff," said John Sutherlin, a political scientist at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. "But I don't see that happening."

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