225BatonRouge.com

The morning air is dewy and the skies gray above the Ville Platte Rice Drier in the heart of this rural town an hour north of Lafayette. Bobby Jindal is nowhere to be seen, but tucked inside a white, low-slung room in the belly of the factory, his name is inescapable. It’s levitated on red and blue helium balloons, scripted on hand-painted posters, printed on yard signs that lean against the wall, and reclining on fold-out tables baring stacks of campaign bumper stickers. “Ville Platte [hearts] Bobby” and other sugary testimonies cover almost every inch of a blackboard, as if the Congressman is running for student council president, and homeroom is the politicking Mecca.

“Are you signed in?” a meek voice asks from somewhere in the region of my hipbone. I look down to find a mop-topped boy no older than 7 staring up at me. He carries a clipboard and wears a blue campaign sticker on his chest like a sheriff wears a badge.

The Jindal machine has prepared the way. And they’ve brought their children.

By 9 a.m. some 60 people mill about anxiously on the concrete floor, a mural of large red and green tractors staring back at them. Even Miss Ville Platte, a petite brunette saddled with the unenviable task of balancing a giant cone of a crown on her head, has turned out to see him.

It’s just the type of crowd of rural white gun owners who probably didn’t vote for Jindal on the Republican ticket four years ago. And yet, here they are. It is mid-August and armed with a splashy endorsement from the National Rifle Association, this is already Jindal’s third visit with the people of Ville Platte. I don’t know if the Baton Rouge native wore boots and khakis for the first two, but he’s wearing them now as he strides into the room to pep rally applause and premeditated chants of “Bah-bee! Bah-bee!”

It is impossible to miss how thin Jindal looks without a jacket. He likes to stay that way, too, because he exercises almost every day before going to work. Though he later admits that his late nights on bus tours often mean fast food for dinner. Over the continual hum of the rice drier, Jindal wastes no time launching into an informal speech about cutting bureaucratic red tape, increasing discipline in public schools and weeding legislators’ undisclosed special projects out of a bloated budget.

Over and over Jindal uses the phrase “common sense.” He throws out broad-stroke goals but always follows up with a casual “Now, what do I mean by that?” He confidently alludes to detailed strategies, his 25-point plan for cracking down on corruption, his 31-point plan for “gold standard” ethics. Eyes in the crowd blink at those numbers before Jindal hits a few talking points that get heads nodding in agreement.

He even manages a few jokes. “Some people are worried about their kids accidentally being exposed to prayer,” he says. “I’m worried about my kids being accidentally exposed to Paris Hilton.” That draws a huge laugh.

Jindal finishes with what he is obviously trying to turn into a catchphrase: “We can change. We must change. We will change.” After presenting him with a homemade blackberry pie and a woven gift basket, it’s picture time with the candidate. Miss Ville Platte, Mayor Bill Jeanmard, everyone wants a snapshot.

“He did a good job today,” local police juror David Manuel leans over and says to me. “But if you get a chance, tell him that when he comes to Cajun Country, he needs to slow down the speech a little.”

A common criticism of Jindal’s 2003 campaign was that he spoke too fast. Some say they got almost a used car salesman vibe from his rapid-fire delivery that covered a lot of ground in little time. “I told him he talks too fast, and he laughed,” U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery says. “But he’s slowed down some, and he’s a much better public speaker than he was four years ago.”

The Rhodes scholar learned a great deal from the previous campaign, but at 36, his age remains an issue for some. The funny thing is, his parents still treat him like a mom and dad would.

“Every time my mom calls me during a campaign she asks me the same two questions,” Jindal says sounding slightly hoarse. “‘Are you getting enough to eat?’ and ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’” His father holds great interest in the campaigns, but views them through his own precious microcosm. “I think you need to do a recount,” he told Bobby after Kathleen Blanco won in 2003. “Everybody in my office voted for you!” Jindal laughs.

His children are young, ages 5, 3 and 1. The infant Slade he famously delivered at home last year. His oldest, Celia, is about the same age Jindal was when he announced his name change from Piyush to “Bobby” in honor of his favorite character on The Brady Bunch. Celia is ultra-protective of her time with her dad, especially when supporters strike up conversations while the family is having dinner or running errands. Once she woke him up in the wee small hours—after he arrived late from D.C.—and he walked into the den to see she had set up board games for them to play.

“As tired as I was, I was so glad I got up to play with her because she had been so eagerly waiting,” Jindal says sounding slightly hoarse. “Your kids only grow up once, and I want to make sure they look back on this time and realize they were the most important thing to me.”

As much time as he makes for his family, Jindal is a high-energy guy who loves to work. As he puts it, he “enjoys being busy and meeting people.” These bus tours can begin at dawn and last until midnight.

Ironically, Jindal relaxes on his quiet bus, those cowboy boots resting on the black tile floor as he leans back into a cozy leather seat. Plasma TVs oppose each other on each end of the bus, both tuned to CNN. More than once Jindal uses the word “blessed” to describe how he feels.

I ask him if there is anything in the political realm that does not come naturally to him, because so much seems to, and he says he’s never been comfortable with mudslinging. Comfortable or not, the gloves come off days later when Jindal airs his first attack ad portraying state Sen. Walter Boasso and Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell as circus clowns incapable of ending corruption at the Capitol. The same day the state democratic party broadcast its own attack ad in North Louisiana’s Bible Belt. This one using quotes from Jindal’s 1996 New Oxford Review article about his Catholic faith out of context, spinning them as anti-Protestant.

Jindal’s race to the Governor’s Mansion took some small lumps this summer, starting with supporter Sen. David Vitter’s scandal. Then there was a licensing flap with LSU over the use of purple-and-gold “Tigers for Jindal” bumper stickers, which his campaign staff initially rebuffed, but eventually agreed to discontinue. In early August, dailies and liberal blogs across the state lit up after Jindal passed on debating with Boasso and Campbell at a governor’s forum for the second time.

En route to Rayne we discuss everything from how much Baton Rouge has changed since the 1970s to old stories of he and his brother shooting hoops in the driveway. When we pull into the parking lot of the Crawfish Hut, Jindal politely asks to be excused. Entering behind Jindal, I get a pretty good idea what it must be like for him. The roar of more than 100 people packed inside the small restaurant holds a palpable intensity.

This joint smells like fresh air and fried catfish, and it is loud. From blue wood slat walls, dead deer look down on Jindal addressing the group. This time his call for more common sense in government draws an ecclesiastical “Amen!” A blonde stands on a chair at the back of the restaurant, camera ready, to get a better view. Jindal seems more relaxed here than he was in Ville Platte, and after wrapping with “We can change, we must change, and we will change,” the gathering dissolves into a luncheon. Lids are pulled off huge vats of crawfish etouffee and white rice, releasing billows of steam into the room.

People come to see Jindal for all sorts of reasons. Many tell me they support him for his Christian values. “Most everybody else I know is voting for him,” retired Ville Platte native Tom LaFleur tells me with a shrug. Small business owner Romel Charles, the only black supporter at the Crawfish Hut, is a little more articulate. “He’s committed to his purpose, he serves all the people, and he lets the facts be known,” he says.

Congressman Bobby Jindal uses every small window of time he gets talking to his wife, Supriya, and kids on his BlackBerry.

Back on the bus Jindal’s thumbs work a BlackBerry. He tells me he likes to fit in a few three-minute conversations with his wife and kids throughout the day rather than waiting for one of those 30-minute windows that never seem to come. After a quick phone call about a speech, I suspect it is Supriya he is talking to right before he walks to the other end of the bus for more privacy.

The lights are on and the cameras rolling in Lafayette. Jindal’s videographer aims his lens at us in the parking lot of the Blue Dog Café—co-owned by artist George Rodrigue.

Fox 15 and KATC 3 are filming, too, and Jindal knows it. He walks into the slam-packed café wearing a sharp navy blazer and a lapel pin with the U.S. and Louisiana flags crossed. Dozens of painted Blue Dogs catch me in their inquisitive stare as I am pressed into a corner behind Jindal’s regional field director, Aleisha Sylvester. Somebody knocks into a glass vase next to me, and it shatters. A few pints of water spill down my right leg. This is against fire code. This is nuts.

I notice the same hand-painted posters from Ville Platte and Rayne have beaten us to Lafayette and made it into the hands of another set of enthusiastic kids. The Jindal machine hard at work again. The speech is the same, but this time his voice builds stronger and nears a small boom as he finishes with “We can change. We must change. And we will change!”

As if on cue, the crowd cheers and closes in on Jindal fast. I lose sight of him. A middle-aged woman who looks like a former beauty queen asks me if I spy him. Before I can answer she darts straight into the throng like a rabid fan. As the tour bus pulls out of the parking lot, a woman stands alone waving at the tinted windows above Jindal’s striking red-white-and-blue logo. She blows a kiss as the bus pulls out and carries its candidate to Kinder, a town even smaller and more rural than Ville Platte.

According to an August poll by Southern Media & Opinion Research, Jindal leads 63% to Boasso’s 14%. That’s a staggering statistic, but not enough to rest on if Jindal wants to avoid a runoff like the one he lost in 2003.

Jindal has spent much of his adult life as the youngest person in the room in a position of authority. He directed Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals at age 24. Because of that, he seems more comfortable in the role of the underdog. A huge basketball fan, Jindal negatively compares the idea of running a cautious, defensive campaign to college teams holding the ball to protect a lead in the pre-shot clock era.

“I know we’re up in the polls,” he tells me. “But I can’t look at it that way. We wake up every day and go to work like we’re 10 points behind.”