MONROE, LA. — When Bobby Jindal lost his first Louisiana governor's race four years ago, some experts told him that white people here were not ready to elect a dark-skinned son of Indian immigrants.
On Tuesday, as he dashed across the state in a victory caravan after his historic Saturday landslide win, Louisiana's Republican governor-elect had a message for his rural supporters: Thank you for proving the conventional political wisdom wrong.
Jindal, 36 -- who will become the first Indian American governor of any state, the youngest current governor in the country, and the first nonwhite to lead Louisiana since Reconstruction -- refused to believe that his ethnicity was an obstacle to his political dreams.
He essentially never stopped campaigning after his 2003 defeat to Democratic Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, an election in which he failed to win over many of the white rural voters who could have been expected to love his conservative positions.
Jindal was convinced that if voters got to know him, they would see him as a fellow native son from Baton Rouge, not an exotic foreigner with an Ivy League degree.
So he made more than 70 trips to northern Louisiana cities such as Shreveport, and the devout Catholic seemingly attended Sunday Mass at every small church in the state, even after he was elected to represent suburban New Orleans in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004.
"In these small Louisiana towns, retail politics is very important," Jindal said in an interview from his tour bus as he rode to the town of Natchitoches. He always believed Blanco beat him simply because she was better known. "I don't think there's any substitute for staring someone in the eye and listening," he said.
Jindal's tireless tours, especially in the conservative northern parishes considered key to his earlier defeat, impressed seasoned political observers, who said that by the time his rivals entered this year's race, Jindal's hard-earned backing in the rural stronghold was insurmountable.
"I have never seen anyone work so hard," said Bernie Pinsonat, a Louisiana pollster and political consultant. "I had a local legislator tell me that he had to go to church more often, because Jindal had been to his church more times than he had."
Jindal wound up winning all but four of Louisiana's 64 parishes -- nearly the entire state except New Orleans. It was an embarrassing defeat for Democrats, who were unable even to force Jindal into a runoff.
