“I’ve come to the realization this is not my time,” Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star, said while declaring that he was withdrawing from the campaign to be the next presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Jindal, the first ever Indian American Governor, whose popularity has plummeted in his own state, dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday, November 17, 2015, conceding that he was unable to find any traction. Jindal withdrew days before a runoff election in the Louisiana governor’s race, a contest in which the candidates in both parties have intermittently criticized the once-popular incumbent.
Jindal is the third candidate in the now 14-member Republican field to drop out of race. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin also ended their campaigns.
During his months long campaign, Jindal had unveiled a series of policy proposals, ferociously attacked Donald J. Trumpand spent considerable time courting conservatives in Iowa, which begins the presidential nominating process. None of it worked. He raised little money, did not rise high enough in the polls to appear on the prime-time debate stage and was overshadowed by unconventional candidates such as Trump and Ben Carson. “We spent a lot of time developing detailed policy papers, and given this crazy, unpredictable election season, clearly there just wasn’t a lot of interest in those policy papers,” Jindal said in an interview on Fox News Tuesday night.
Jindal, 44, a son of Indian immigrants, was first elected governor in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and he initially enjoyed great popularity. But he fell out of favor in a second term characterized by fiscal crises and frequent out-of-state travels. Seventy percent of Louisianans disapprove of his job performance, according to a University of New Orleans poll taken this month.
He was his state’s secretary of health at age 24 and oversaw its public universities by 28.
Jindal, who effectively began his presidential bid by declaring Republicans “the stupid party” in the wake of the 2012 election, tried to win attention to his long-shot White House campaign with a number of gambits. He placed a hidden camera in a tree outside the governor’s mansion to record a family meeting in which he first informed his children he was running for president and released the video to the news media.
Jindal, the first ever Indian American to be on the campaign mode, seeking to win the White House has been trailing behind almost all other Republican candidates. After trailing behind in the campaign, it appeared that Jindal was gaining some momentum. In a survey published Nov. 2 by Public Policy Polling, Iowa GOP voters gave Indian American Bobby Jindal, R-La., a healthy amount of support.
Jindal, according to the PPP survey of 638 “usual Republican primary voters” in Iowa taken from Oct. 30 through Nov. 1, earned 6 percent support. The Louisiana governor is now slotted as the fifth-most supported Republican presidential hopeful, tied with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. In addition to polling about support, the survey asked about favorability, in which Jindal received 60 percent favorability. Bush, on the flipside, had only a 30 percent positive viewing, with 43 percent viewing him negatively. Carson and Cruz were the only two candidates ahead of Jindal’s favorability.
According to published sources, his record of good governance in his state is lackluster. He is described as a supporter of the rich. In his state, he was in favor of abolishing all corporate and personal income tax but in favor of raising the sales tax in order to make up for the loss of revenue to the state. His legislature wisely refused to go along with him for such regressive taxation.
Jindal refused to accept federal funding of $1.65 billion to expand Medicaid to the poor. He is pro-life and anti-abortion, and against same-sex marriage. He is against public funding of embryonic stem cell research. He favors the teaching of intelligent design in schools. He was against enforcing laws for the prevention of hate crimes in his state. His state ranked last for transparency in the United States.
Month after month, week after week, Gov. Bobby Jindal has been working to make himself relevant to the 2016 presidential election. Every week, Jindal made some (increasingly) desperate attempt for attention and relevance. On the rare occasion he made an appearance in Louisiana, he’s done everything possible to establish himself as a champion of “religious freedom.” He signed an executive order to give license to businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples. He’s even championed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would outlaw same-sex marriage.
As per media reports, despite having made a wreck of the state’s budget (including structural deficits for years), he’s also sold his soul to Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. He had approved more than $700 million in tax increases, in an attempt to earn GOP votes in Iowa and New Hampshire portraying himself as the candidate most violently against tax increases.
Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, son of immigrant parents from India, said that immigrants who do not adopt American values represent an “invasion”. “Immigration without integration is not immigration; it’s invasion, he told ABC when asked about tough stances against illegal immigration taken by Republican front-runner Donald Trump and other party candidates. “Look, as a child of immigrants, my parents have never taken this country for granted,” said the Louisiana governor who was born in the US three months after his pregnant mother came from India. “When it comes to immigration policy, what I’ve experienced and seen is that a smart immigration policy makes our country stronger; a dumb one makes us weaker. We’ve got a dumb one today,” he said.
In the statement announcing his departure, Mr. Jindal indicated he would return to focusing on policy issues. “One of the things I will do is go back to work at the think tank I started a few years ago — where I will be outlining a blueprint for making this the American century,” he said.