Thanks for everything you did to help support us during this campaign. I look back with no regrets. I enjoyed meeting thousands of incredible people who invested in me their time, money, and ---- most importantly ---- their hopes and dreams. I wouldn’t change a thing ---- I am proud of the fact that we ran a positive, issues-oriented campaign. We came extremely close to winning and certainly surpassed everyone’s expectations. I am encouraged by the optimism and energy of the people I met across the state. There are bright days ahead for the great people of the great state of Louisiana. We are taking the week to thank as many people as possible and to wrap up loose ends, and will then spend some time with family ---- appropriately during Thanksgiving ---- giving thanks for our many blessings. I truly believe that as one door closes, God another. We will decide what to do next after some time and prayer. Thanks again for your friendship. --------- Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal, right, with his wife Supriya Jolly and daughter Selia Elizabeth. (Photo, as it appears on Jindal’s Web site)

For Bobby Jindal, tough goals were easy to meet, the more difficult the challenge, the more sharpened his wits. So it must have been hard to walk into the Astro Crowne Plaza Hotel on Nov. 15 night and see the sea of disappointed faces of supporters who were convinced he would win, and concede his defeat in the race for Louisiana Governor.

“I stand here before you disappointed but not discouraged,” Jindal declared approximately half-an-hour after the final tally that showed Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco had defeated him by 4 percent of votes. “Although we didn’t win, we made the case that in Louisiana the American dream is more alive here than anywhere else. We proved that any child in Louisiana can dream big things and make them happen right here.”

He was that child ---- of immigrant parents. The bright child who grew up to become a Rhodes Scholar, who headed the Louisiana Health system at 24, chaired efforts to redesign the nation’s medicare system, and was appointed by President George Bush as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. If he had won in Louisiana, he would have been the youngest Governor in the country and the only Indian American to achieve that position.

Surely, all that went through his mind as he coped with his defeat ---- the goal had been so near and yet so far. People said Jindal lost some of the Black vote that could have catapulted him to victory because of other races going on in some precincts, and he lost some of the White vote to race preferences.

His troops had gone out on a limb since February 2003, when he left Washington and came back to his home state to make the historic move from appointed to elected politics. With his wife Supriya Jolly, 31, and his daughter Selia Elizabeth, 18 months, at his side and his parents and close supporters around him, Jindal recounted the tireless campaign trail and spoke of high ideals in what sounded more like a national rather than local appeal.

“I am the son of two parents who came to America by choice, and I understand we shouldn’t take that freedom lightly,” he said, lines that his opponent would hardly have thought of voicing for she was a many-generations-old Cajun where Jindal was first generation. It was also natural for him to speak to a nation rather than to Louisianans alone, coming as he did from Washington.

“There has been real human sacrifice by great men and women. Indeed, we’ve got men and women in uniform right now overseas ensuring that we have the right today to wake up, go to the polls in a free country and vote,” he said.

In a way, Jindal shook up the politics of a state that had come to accept the “same old” ways of thinking and operating. While his ideas may not have been new, and many said his platform and that of his opponent mirrored each other, he infused an enthusiasm missing from Louisiana politics, according to some.

Analysts have called Jindal’s rise in the polls as nothing short of remarkable. From an unknown entity when he came in February (two-thirds of Louisianans did not know him and only 19 percent found him “acceptable” as a candidate) he was known to most of the Louisiana voting public (only 13 percent were unfamiliar with him) come Nov. 15 (62 percent found him an “acceptable” candidate).

“We are not done yet. We made a good start,” he told the crowd that shouted “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby” in unison. “I am never going to stop fighting to change our state for the better. We will have the will. We can put ethics at the top of our state’s agenda instead of its end.”

In fact, he sounded as he did during the campaign. But that phase was over. He not only did not mention the winner nor reflect on her aggressive assault on his record. Instead, he recounted how his supporters, including those that crossed party lines, went to bat for him, including the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, who stood behind him on the podium. Fears of being perceived as an “outsider” had kept Jindal from resorting to heavy GOP support unlike his opponent, for whom the Democratic Party pulled out all the stops.

“I have been humbled by your confidence,” he said. “I am a lucky man.”