Bobby Jindal, 36, makes history, becoming the first South Asian American governor of a U.S. state, winning the Louisiana election a few minutes ago. I have been live blogging the event at SAJAforum and you can see how the results trickled in over the last hour or so at http://www.sajaforum.org/2007/10/jindal-live-blo.html.
The son of Indian immigrants, he lost the governor's race in 2003, then became the first Indian elected to Congress in 2004 and was re-elected in 2006. As a conservative Republican who converted to Catholocism as a teenager, he hasn't received the support of all South Asians in the U.S. See my earlier post on Saturday, Bobby Jindal's Big Day, which talked about some of the attitudes toward him in the South Asian community.
More reactions from around the world coming here... See roundup of front pages. Post your comments below.
- Here's an in-depth story from Sunday, a full day after his win: "Governor-Elect Tackles Louisiana's Image," by Melinda Deslatte (Oct. 21, 11:55 p.m.)
- From the Indian American Leadership Initiative, a leading Democratic organization among Indian Americans:
(arrived 12:01 a.m. Oct. 21)
Contact: Jay Chaudhuri, President, IALI
Phone: (919) 423-5281 (cell)
www.ialeadership.com
Jay Chaudhuri, President of the Indian American Leadership Initiative issued the following statement regarding Governor-Elect Bobby Jindal's victory.
"Tonight, Bobby Jindal replaces the Mardi Gras Indians as the best known Indian from Louisiana. We congratulate him for providing Indian-Americans a seat of the table. The test over the next four years is whether he is the right person for the seat. We hope that Governor Jindal proceeds with caution on social policies such as mandatory prayer in school which will be troubling to many Indian-Americans."
From NYTimes.com (click to magnify the screen grab): Indian-American Wins Vote to be Louisiana's Governor.
Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressman from the New Orleans suburbs and the son of immigrants from India, was elected Louisiana’s governor Saturday, inheriting a state that was suffering well before Hurricane Katrina left lingering scars two years ago.
From NOLA.com, the site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Louisiana voters chose Bobby Jindal to be their next governor Saturday, handing the 36-year-old Republican wunderkind an electoral prize that eluded him four years ago after a low-key race yielded a historic victory.
By winning more than 50 percent of the primary vote against a field of 12 candidates, Jindal became the first candidate to win an open gubernatorial seat since Louisiana adopted its all-party "jungle" non-partisan primary system in 1975 and the first member of a racial minority to become the state's chief executive since Reconstruction.
From Aziz Haniffa of Rediff/India Abroad, who has covered Jindal more closely than any other South Asian journalist:
An elated Jindal with his wife Supriya by his side, who was holding their three-year-old son, at the election party in the ballroom of the Holiday Inn Select in Baton Rouge, exclaimed, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Louisiana," and then declared, "Folks, I have got a great idea. Let's give our homeland, our great state of Louisiana a fresh start."
And then thanking his wife, said, "As anyone who knows me knows, there's no Bobby without Supriya,"
From Aaman Lamba, blogging at Desicritics.org:
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal also capitalized on support from the Indian-American community, who cut across party lines to support someone they saw as embodying their political aspirations. <snip>
His political stance is stridently to the right, having stated he is "100% against abortion, no exceptions", being pro-intelligent design, and having voted the party line almost entirely. Democrats opposed his campaign on various grounds, including questionable campaign contributions, but their own post-Katrina incompetence and corruption made this stand a hard one to defend.
See roundup of front pages. More to come. Post your comments below.
Earlier on SAJAforum:
