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NRI Bobby Jindal elected Louisiana's Governor on Oct. 20, 2007

 

Bobby Jindal elected Louisiana's Governor

  • First non-white governor since post-Civil War Reconstruction and the first Indian-American to govern a U.S. state.
  • He is the first governor from Baton Rouge since the 1920s
  • The youngest governor in the nation.

Louisiana, Oct. 21, 2008
Satnam Grewal

NRI Bobby Jindal, 36, the first nonwhite governor and the youngest governor in the nation, defeated 11 opponents and became the state's first Louisiana's governor.

Bobby Jindal took almost 700,000 votes, the highest ballot numbers for a for a non-incumbent primary candidate in recent history Jindal succeeds Democrat Kathleen Blanco, who chose not to run for re-election to a second term after harsh criticism of her response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He pledged to fight corruption and rid the state of those "feeding at the public troug"

Jindal got 53% with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. Democrat Walter Boasso with 208,690 votes or 18 percent; Independent John Georges had 167,477 votes or 14 percent; Democrat Foster Campbell had 151,101 or 13 percent. Blanco opted not to run for re-election after she was widely blamed for the state's slow response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The race was one of the highest-spending in Louisiana history. Jindal alone raised $11 million, and Georges poured about $10 million of his personal wealth into his campaign war chest while Boasso plugged in nearly $5 million of his own cash.

He was only the second NRI (non-resident Indian) to sit in Congress after Dilip Singh Saund, who represented a California district from 1957 to 1963.