Bobby Jindal

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is an American politician who served as the 55th Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. The only living former Louisiana governor, Jindal also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

In 1995, Jindal was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. In 1999, he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana System. At 28, Jindal became the youngest person to hold the position. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Jindal as principal adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Jindal first ran for governor of Louisiana in 2003, but narrowly lost in the run-off election to Democratic candidate Kathleen Blanco. In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the second Indian American in Congress, and he was reelected in 2006. To date, he is the only Indian-American Republican to have ever served in Congress. Jindal ran for governor again in the 2007 election and won. Jindal was re-elected in 2011 in a landslide, winning more than 65 percent of the vote. He was the first Indian American governor, and the only one until Nikki Haley was elected Governor of South Carolina in 2010.

On June 24, 2015, Jindal announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. He suspended his campaign in November 2015, subsequently announcing his support for Marco Rubio. He finished his term as governor in January 2016.

Early life and education

Piyush Jindal was born on June 10, 1971 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to immigrant Punjabi Hindu parents. He is the first of two sons of Raj (née Gupta) and Amar Jindal, from Punjab, India. His father is a civil engineer and graduate of Guru Nanak Dev University and Punjab University. His mother is a graduate of Rajasthan University and worked in nuclear physics at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh. Before migrating to the United States, both his parents were lecturers at an Indian engineering college.

At the time of their move to the U.S., Raj Jindal was to be a doctoral candidate in physics. They left Malerkotla, Punjab in January 1971, six months before their son was born. Jindal's paternal grandfather was a merchant from Khanpur, Samrala and his maternal grandfather was a Ferozepur banker.

The family settled near Louisiana State University. Jindal attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School, graduating in 1988. While in high school, he competed in tennis tournaments, started various enterprises such as a computer newsletter, retail candy business, and a mail-order software company. He spent free time working in the stands at LSU football games.

Jindal graduated from Brown University in 1992 at the age of 20, with honors in two majors, biology and public policy.Sager, Mike (February 24, 2009)
"Bobby Jindal, All American"
, Esquire.com; accessed July 27, 2017.

Jindal was admitted to the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), guaranteeing him a place at Brown Medical School. He did not pursue his Medical Doctorate. Jindal has been credited with leading Brown University's College Republicans student group.

Jindal was named to the 1992 ''USA Today'' All-USA Academic Team. He applied to and was accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but studied as a Rhodes Scholar where he received an MLitt in political science with an emphasis in health policy from New College, Oxford in 1994. The subject of his thesis was "A needs-based approach to health care".

Career

After completing his studies at Oxford, Jindal turned down an offer to study for a D.Phil. in politics, instead joining the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. He then interned in the office of Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, where McCrery assigned him to work on healthcare policy; Jindal spent two weeks studying Medicare to compile an extensive report on possible solutions to Medicare's financial problems, which he presented to McCrery.

Early political career (1996–2003)

Foster administration

In 1993, U.S. Representative Jim McCrery (whom Jindal had worked for as a summer intern) introduced him to Governor Mike Foster. In 1996, Foster appointed Jindal as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, an agency that represented about 40 percent of the state budget and employed over 12,000 people. Foster called Jindal a genius who had a great deal of medical knowledge. Jindal was 24 at the time.

During his tenure, Louisiana's Medicaid program went from bankruptcy with a $400 million deficit into three years of surpluses totaling $220 million.

Jindal was criticized during the 2007 campaign by the Louisiana AFL–CIO for closing some local clinics to reach that surplus. Under Jindal's term, Louisiana nationally rose to third place in child healthcare screenings, with child immunizations rising, and introduced new and expanded services for the elderly and the disabled.

In 1998, Jindal was appointed executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a 17-member panel charged with devising plans to reform Medicare. In 1999, at the request of the Louisiana governor's office and the Louisiana State Legislature, Jindal examined how Louisiana might use its $4.4 billion share of the tobacco settlement.

In 1998, Jindal received the Samuel S. Beard Award for greatest public service by an individual 35 years old or under, an award given annually by Jefferson Awards.

At 28 years of age in 1999, Jindal was appointed to become the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System, the nation's 16th largest system of higher education with over 80,000 students.

Bush administration

In March 2001, he was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation. He was later unanimously confirmed by a vote of the United States Senate and began serving on July 9, 2001. In that position, he served as the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He resigned from that post on February 21, 2003, to return to Louisiana and run for governor. He was assigned to help fight the nurse shortage by examining steps to improve nursing education.

2003 election for governor

Jindal came to national prominence during the 2003 election for governor of Louisiana. In what Louisianans call an "open primary" (but which is technically a nonpartisan blanket primary), Jindal finished first with 33 percent of the vote. He received endorsements from the largest paper in Louisiana, the ''Times-Picayune''; the newly elected Democratic mayor of New Orleans, 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 hometown, he lost many normally conservative parishes in north Louisiana, and Blanco prevailed with 52 percent of the popular vote.

Some political analysts blamed Jindal's loss for his refusal to answer questions targeted at his religion and ethnic background brought up in several Democratic advertisements, which the Jindal campaign called "negative attack ads." Despite losing the election in 2003, the run for governor made Jindal a well-known figure on the state's political scene and a rising star within the Republican Party.

U.S. House of Representatives (2005–2008)

Elections

2004

A few weeks after the 2003 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. The Louisiana Republican Party endorsed him in the primary although 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 staunchly conservative. Jindal's campaign was able to raise over $1 million very early in the campaign, making it harder for other candidates to effectively raise funds to oppose him. He won the 2004 election with 78 percent of the vote.

Jindal was only the second Indian-American to be elected to the United States Congress, after Dalip Singh Saund was elected in November 1955.

2006

Jindal won re-election to a second term with 88% of the vote.

Congressional tenure

He was the second Indian American elected to Congress. He has reportedly lived in Kenner, Metairie, and Baton Rouge.

In 2005, Jindal criticized Bush's budget for not calling for enough spending cuts. He warned of the growth of Medicaid saying "Congress may act without them...there seems to be growing momentum that the status quo is not defensible." Jindal praised Bush's leadership on social security reform, saying "The administration has a lot more work to do to continue educating the American people about the very serious challenges facing Social Security."

In response to Hurricane Katrina, Jindal stated "If we had been investing resources in restoring our coast, it wouldn't have prevented the storm, but the barrier islands would have absorbed some of the tidal surge."

Committee assignments

* House Committee on Homeland Security
* House Committee on Resources
* House Committee on Education and the Workforce

He was made vice-chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks. Jindal served as president of the incoming freshman class of congressmen, in 2004. He was elected to the position of House assistant majority whip, a senior leadership role. He served in this capacity from 2004 to 2006.

2007 gubernatorial election

On January 22, 2007, Jindal announced his candidacy for governor. Polling data showed him with an early lead in the race, and he remained the favorite throughout the campaign. He defeated eleven opponents in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, including two prominent Democrats, State Senator Walter Boasso of Chalmette and Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell of Bossier City, and an independent, New Orleans businessman John Georges.

Jindal finished with 699,672 votes (54 percent). Boasso ran second with 226,364 votes (17 percent). Georges finished with 186,800 (14 percent), and Campbell, who is also a former state senator, ran fourth with 161,425 (12 percent). The remaining candidates collectively polled three percent of the vote. Jindal polled well in the pluralities or majorities