Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal announced his candidacy for the White House on Wednesday via a “hidden camera” video posted on Facebook.
In the video, Jindal, the two-term governor of the Pelican State, gathers his family around a table in their backyard to tell his children that he is running for president. Jindal describes the decision as something that he and his wife have been thinking about and promises his children that “if they behave they can go back to Iowa”.
He followed that with a tweet:
I’m running for President of the United States of America. Join me: http://t.co/MmqB4kxpUq
— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) June 24, 2015
This makes Jindal the 13th Republican to announce a 2016 presidential bid. However, he faces an uphill battle and currently polls at less than 1% in the crowded GOP field.
A former Rhodes scholar who had long been considered a rising star in the GOP, Jindal’s fortunes have ebbed in recent years.
His approval ratings in his home state have hit an all-time low and fellow Republicans have railed against a gimmick in his most recent budget that serves to disguise an increase in revenue.
This marks a major fall for a Republican who was once considered the future of the GOP. A two-term congressman who became the first Indian American governor in American history in 2007 at the age of 36, Jindal was tapped to give the Republican response to Barack Obama’s first address to Congress in 2009.
“During his terms in Congress and his first year as governor [2008] he was seen as a bit of a policy wonk. Someone who was very comfortable with public policies in a number of different areas, most notably education and healthcare. He seemed to have command of information very easily,” said Brian Brox, a political scientist at Tulane University.
However, his 2009 speech was widely panned as Jindal was compared to the character Kenneth the Page from the television show 30 Rock and the Louisiana governor’s political fortunes have never fully recovered.
But that comparison isn’t the only obstacle that Jindal’s longshot bid for the White House faces. The Louisiana Republican has also drawn criticism for making a series of flip-flops on issues like Common Core to appeal to his party’s conservative base. Jindal went from being a staunch advocate of the program when it was adopted in Louisiana in 2010 to a vehement critic of the educational standards.
Jindal, who converted to Catholicism as a young man, has also drawn national scrutiny for his social conservatism.
The 44-year-old has sought to appeal to social conservatives by staking out common rightwing stances on hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, gun control and religious liberty. He drew national attention for signing a bill to allow the teaching of creationism in Louisiana schools in 2008.
Jindal told Fox News last week that Barack Obama’s call for the nation to address gun violence in the wake of the Charleston church massacre was a “completely shameful” attempt “to score cheap political points”.
His approach risks obscuring his personal story and his talents as a policy strategist, Brox said: “He’s going to try to be all things to all comers but to me it strikes me as a hard trick to try and do that when there are better exemplars already in the candidate field for each of those paths.”
He enters the race as a rank outsider, with polls of primary voters putting him in 15th place among confirmed and likely GOP candidates.
Brox said that Jindal might struggle to stand out from the crowded pack. “There are other southerners in the race. There are other social conservatives and evangelicals in the race. There are other governors in the race. And there are certainly people with a lot better war chests in the race. We’ve not heard a compelling statement about why he is different and better than the alternatives,” he said.
Regardless of the obstacles that he faces, Jindal’s candidacy is historic. He is the first Indian American ever to run for the White House.
Further, if elected, Jindal would be the third-youngest president (behind Theodore Roosevelt and John F Kennedy).
The Louisiana governor is expected to give a formal announcement speech later today in his home state.
