Close X
Monday, November 25, 2024
ADVT 
International

Bobby Jindal, 44, Set To Join White House Race

Darpan News Desk, 24 Jun, 2015 12:13 PM
    Louisiana governor Piyush "Bobby"Jindal is widely expected to launch a bid for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday, becoming the first Indian-American and 13th Republican to join the 2016 White House race.
     
    "If I decide to announce on June 24th that I will seek the Republican nomination for President, my candidacy will be based on the idea that the American people are ready to try a dramatically different direction," he said in a statement earlier this month.
     
    "We don't need just small changes, we need a dramatically different path," said Jindal, who as a child changed his first name to Bobby, after a character in the "Brady Bunch."
     
    US-born son of immigrant parents from India, he converted from Hinduism to Christianity as a teen, and was later baptised a Catholic as a student at Brown University.
     
    Once viewed as a rising star of the Republican party, Jindal, 44, who was the youngest American governor when first elected in 2007, is now polling toward the bottom of the Republican field, registering at just 1 percent in the latest CNN/ORC poll this month.
     
     
    Jindal is entering an already crowded field of Republican candidates including Jeb Bush, Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee, former governors of Florida, Texas and Arkansas respectively, US Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina; and real estate mogul Donald Trump.
     
    Jindal was the second Indian-American to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 2004 after Dalip Singh Saund, a Democrat, in 1957. He was re-elected to the Congress in 2006 before making his second run for governor in 2007. He was re-elected in 2011.
     
    Jindal, who received wide support from the Indian-Americans in his Congressional and gubernatorial campaigns seems to have lost much traction with the community since he recently declared that he was tired of hyphenated Americans.
     
    His parents, he declared, "They weren't coming to raise Indian-Americans. They were coming to raise Americans."
     
    As Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is writing a book on him told the Washington Post: "There's not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal."

    MORE International ARTICLES

    Ministry Investigating Riot At Maximum Security Prison In Penetanguishene, Ont.

    Ministry Investigating Riot At Maximum Security Prison In Penetanguishene, Ont.
    Ontario's Correctional Services Ministry is investigating after a riot at the maximum security Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene.

    Ministry Investigating Riot At Maximum Security Prison In Penetanguishene, Ont.

    South Carolina's Indian American Governor Nikki Haley Seeks Death Penalty For US Church Shooter

    As the white young man who killed nine people at a historic US black church faced a court, many victims' families forgave him, but South Carolina's Indian American governor Nikki Haley sought the death penalty for him.

    South Carolina's Indian American Governor Nikki Haley Seeks Death Penalty For US Church Shooter

    Bobby Jindal Takes Pot Shots At Obama Over Church Shooting

    While one Indian-American Republican governor sought to lay a healing salve after the horrific mass shooting at a historic American church, another chose to take cheap political pot shots at President Barack Obama.

    Bobby Jindal Takes Pot Shots At Obama Over Church Shooting

    Does Modi Do Yoga? Asks Russian President

    Does Modi Do Yoga? Asks Russian President
    Does the man who started the latest yoga fad across the country, and was instrumental in getting June 21 recognised as International Yoga Day, himself practice it?

    Does Modi Do Yoga? Asks Russian President

    Obama Renews Call For Gun Control, Nikki Haley Seeks Death For Shooter

    Obama Renews Call For Gun Control, Nikki Haley Seeks Death For Shooter
    US President Barack Obama made another call for gun control as South Carolina's Indian American Governor Nikki Haley sought death penalty for the white young man who gunned down nine people at a historic black church.

    Obama Renews Call For Gun Control, Nikki Haley Seeks Death For Shooter

    Six-time Olympic Medallist Cindy Klassen Announces Retirement From Speedskating

    Six-time Olympic Medallist Cindy Klassen Announces Retirement From Speedskating
    WINNIPEG — Six-time Olympic medallist Cindy Klassen called it a career Saturday, surrounded by friends, colleagues and family in her hometown of Winnipeg.

    Six-time Olympic Medallist Cindy Klassen Announces Retirement From Speedskating