It is dusk as the 10-seater Cessna comes to a halt at a small airport here on Friday, and waiting supporters chant ‘‘Bobby, Bobby’’. TV cameras push forward, flashlights pop, as Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal emerges with wife Supriya from the plane. He waves to the crowd, setting off the chanting once again. It is yet another stop in the 32-year-old’s non-stop 40-hour trip across the state for the final phase of his campaigning for Governor of Louisiana, termed ‘Hit the Ground Running’. The routine at all meets, from Lafayette to Lake Charles and now Baton Rouge, is the same. After thanking supporters for being there, he starts a rapid fire speech urging supporters to ensure they not only vote for him, but bring along five others to vote on the morrow, and those five in turn bring another five. Most poll analysts predict that a high voter turnout would go in Jindal’s favour. ‘‘I told my wife, ‘We’re going to stay awake for 40 hours and campaign across the state. She said, ‘sign me up; that’s easier than staying home with a two-year old’,’’ Jindal says, eliciting laughter from the crowd and his wife Supriya, who is pregnant with their second child. Referring to the negative campaigning by opponent Democrat Kathleen Blanco, he says: ‘‘They say I don’t like babies, women and old people. I want to say to them, I’m married to a beautiful woman, have a two-year-old daughter, and sorry mom, for picking on you, but there are older people in my family too.’’ His mom, Raj Jindal, laughs with others in the chortling crowd. His 20-odd appearances at the non-stop campaign culminates with a final stop at a midnight rally at a Lion’s Club in downtown New Orleans. If Jindal’s speech is a revelation to his popularity that has brought him close to being the first ever non-White Governor in Louisiana’s history, even more astounding is the sight of the predominantly White crowd that applauds every time he finishes a sentence. At the New Orleans rally, elderly White women do a jig to popular Southern tunes as Jindal makes his way through the thick crowd who edge closer to him to exchange a few words with him. There are plenty of Indian-American supporters who have come from across the United State to support him. In his speech at New Orleans, Jindal turned the issue of race to his favour. He voiced rare words in this campaign on the issue of race in a speech: ‘‘I told the Democratic Party, don’t try to divide us, don’t try to divide us by colour, or by race, by Black or White, or Yellow or Brown, it doesn’t matter what colour we are; all of us want the American dream for our children, to have good jobs, good schools, and good health care.’’ The response was a thunderous applause.
