Louisiana’s gubernatorial election yesterday has all the elements of the American dream. A son of Indian immigrants, Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) is the first minority to be elected governor since Reconstruction. He won with 53% of the votes against two multimillionaire opponents who, unlike Jindal, put millions of dollars of their own money to run against him.
Jindal, a 36-year-old Republican, will be the nation’s youngest governor. He had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday’s election outright and avoid a Nov. 17 runoff.
“My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. And guess what happened. They found the American dream to be alive and well right here in Louisiana.”
Second and third place finishers were Democrat Walter Boasso, who put in $5 million of his own money, got 18 percent of the vote. And Independent John Georges, who put in $11 million of his own cash, got 14 percent. Eight other candidates garnered the rest of the votes.
At 53% to 18%, of if you prefer to look at it another way, 53% to 32%, it appears that the people of the State of Louisiana have decided that decades of Democrats in Baton Rouge, highlighted by the Hurricane Katrina disaster, has not worked out. It also means, as new RNC Chair Mike Duncan says, that “Republican candidates who are true to our Party’s fundamental principles win at the ballot box.”
The reporting of his victory, history-making as it is, has brought up a new phrase for what I would call a minority. “Non-white.” What’s up with that? I think ‘minority’ is not only correct but it doesn’t have a color of skin attached to it. Are we now to believe that ‘minority’ means black? Is there some sort of ownership regarding race for the word ‘minority?’
Jindal, whose first name is Piyush, is the son of immigrants from India and the first non-white Louisiana governor since Reconstruction in the 1870s.
And then there are the nutroots. Who claim that the DNC is calling the GOP racists. Can’t anything happen without being accused of being racist? Didn’t we already go through this last year? It isn’t and wasn’t the Republican party that had a paucity of blacks in key positions of government.
Link:DNC: Racist GOP Elects Jindal Token Governor, Bobby Rises In Louisiana