A friend of mine just forwarded this New York Times article on “An Improbable Favorite Emerges in Cajun Country:”
“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….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…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…Insinuations about his excessive intellectual capacity are still being made. “
When I first clicked on the URL that my friend sent me, I thought that the Caucasian male was the one running for governor, not the scrawny Indian-American to the left. I find this truly remarkable! It’s not that big of a surprise that there is Asian-American representation in the halls of government in the Wester United States as well as Hawaii, but in the deep South where former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke ran for governor in the early 90s? It’s pretty inspiring, even if you don’t agree with Jindal’s politics.
About John
I'm a Taiwanese-American and was born & raised in Western Massachusetts, went to college in upstate New York, worked in Connecticut, went to grad school in North Carolina and then moved out to the Bay Area in 1999 and have been living here ever since - love the weather and almost everything about the area (except the high cost of housing...)
