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John Georges turns to his driver John Rotonti as we enter the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway and tells him to speed up. Georges smiles as we slip past a white SUV with a “Vote Bobby Jindal” bumper sticker on its rear window. It’s the same one-cheek smile Georges chose to put on all of his advertisements and push cards, the one where he seems to have a joke that he’s not telling. Not yet.

We pull even with the SUV, and the other driver sees the signage on the Georgesmobile. Georges waves and flashes an even bigger smile. “Free advertising,” he says with a wink. “Let’s pass this guy,” he tells Rotonti.

As we pull away, the image of the Bobby Jindal bumper sticker fades into the distance, and Georges keeps smiling.

It’s just another moment on just another day on the campaign trail for Georges, a businessman who has turned his family’s grocery supply business, Imperial Trading Co., into a multi-state, multimillion-dollar operation.

Georges is making one of the final legs of his effort to tour Louisiana and get his name into the voting public’s mind, including stops in Bogalusa, Franklinton, Mandeville, Covington and finally, Metairie. By joining the governor’s race later than most of his opponents, he has given himself a shortened deadline for becoming a household name, and he may suffer for it.

There is little question about who the frontrunner is in this race. With nearly 100% name recognition, Bobby Jindal, the only Republican in the race, is the man to beat. And though the New Orleans native doesn’t like to admit it, Georges’ campaign is not so much about showing why Louisiana needs him. It’s about showing why the state needs him more than they need Jindal.

His task is not an easy one, especially with Jindal taking a rope-a-dope approach—staying out of the public eye while his opponents wear themselves out on the trail, then smacking them around verbally in the press when they try and attack him.

“Sure, I’m definitely the underdog at this point,” Georges says. “But Louisiana loves underdogs. I’m OK because it’s when you start believing your own press that you get in trouble. I don’t have any press yet, so I’ll do all right.”

That’s the punch line to the joke Georges hasn’t told.

He knows exactly how far behind Jindal, Foster Campbell and Walter Boasso he is. But with friends and convenience store clients in every parish in the state and a message he firmly believes in, Georges says he can build a solid network that can be turned into an effective voter base. And because he has put $5.5 million of his own money into his war chest, he can focus on campaigning instead of fundraising.

In his opinion, Jindal is little more than a paper tiger who will fold without ferocity when it’s time to go to the polls. All it will take, he says, is someone who has something different to offer the state—someone like himself.

While his political experience is limited to a six-year stint on the Board of Regents, serving as president of his Greek Orthodox church in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina and a long-standing spot on his children’s school board, Georges is a skilled businessman who knows how to run a company or dozens at a time. His campaign workers say he brings a corporate mindset to politics, delegating to his employees and trusting them to carry out his vision. He mentions several times as a point of pride that most of his managers in business and on his campaign are 30-year-olds who bring a younger perspective to the mix.

Though he remained third or fourth in polls on this August day, Georges exudes confidence. He does not seem arrogant, as he has been accused, but he does carry himself with the self-assurance of a professional used to being in charge. A natural multitasker, Georges routinely breaks off in mid-thought to point out churches as we drive, a game he and his workers play to pass the time while on the trail.

“Hey, do you know Todd Graves, the Raising Cane’s guy? He’s a friend of mine,” Georges says to me. Without warning, Georges is on the phone, momentarily putting me on hold.

“Yeah, Todd Graves please,” he says into his BlackBerry. He chats to Graves for a few minutes, telling him that a recent campaign trip to a college bar had been a big success, and with just as little warning to Graves, he hangs up and returns to me.

“We need a person who will get things done and doesn’t give a damn about the numbers,” he says, not missing a beat from our previous conversation. His campaign workers hardly notice the whole affair. For someone with as many irons in the fire as Georges has, it comes naturally.

That’s Georges’ favorite way to break the ice anyway. He will ask people on the trail if they know so-and-so, who owned or worked for such-and-such convenience store, again relying on his hundreds of associates in the grocery business. Most of the time they do. Immediately they share a connection, and Georges has offered an avenue through which they can relate to him. Once Georges gets people on his level, he is a charming conversationalist who is not afraid to wink as he tells a bawdy joke with deadpan delivery. He enjoys talking to people, and it shows. He is at ease when he approaches potential voters, occasionally smoothing his hair out of habit when they ask a tough question.

But his favorite, he says, are the many small-town mayors around the state, people who he says are a “unique collection of characters.”

“I’m about being real, and these mayors are real people. They know what is going on in their city and aren’t afraid to fight for what needs to be done,” Georges says. “They’re starting to appreciate that this is a small-town state and that we need regional cooperation to get things done. Right now, we’ve got small towns fending for themselves, just waiting for a bone to be thrown to them.”

In a meeting with Bogalusa Mayor James M. “Mack” McGehee, Georges gets to hear about the city’s troubles, but before long the two men are laughing and joking, sharpening their rapier wits for a verbal fencing match. McGehee says he would like Georges a whole lot more if he were a Democrat, and in turn, Georges parries by saying he doesn’t want to be known as a “party guy,” but a switch is not out of the question.

His party affiliation has been the rub of Georges’ campaign, and it’s something that arose several times during his tour of the North Shore. A lot of people like the idea of a new face in politics, as Deputy Sheriff Frenchie Williams says in the Franklinton Police Station, and his message appears to resonate with most people he approaches. But they all want him to be on their side of the aisle. Georges wavers on his ties to the Republican Party. He says his party pedigree has no reason to be challenged, though it does put him in a tough spot in this race. On the right, Georges faces Jindal, a formidable adversary anyway, and on the left he has the combined forces of Boasso and Campbell, and as late as Sept. 6, the specter of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who had been widely rumored to be considering a statewide play for governor. Nagin decided not to qualify for the contest. However, Georges found the middle ground on the final day of qualifying, opting for independent status as opposed to switching parties entirely.

If he had run, Elliott Stonecipher, political and demographic analyst and owner of Evets Management Services, says Nagin’s presence could have determined whether a runoff would have been necessary because of his prominence as a state Democrat. Georges says he considered making the move to the Democratic side of the aisle, but Nagin’s presence would have made that a challenging proposition.

‘Sure, I’m definitely the underdog at this point. But Louisiana loves underdogs,’ says independent gubernatorial candidate John Georges on the campaign trail.

Georges’ solution? A compromise, no-party platform based on tough Republican politics presented in a compassionate Democratic manner. His current television ads feature his wife Dathel and their three children, Zana, 14, Liza, 13, and Nike, 10. Georges says it’ll be through his family that his platform reaches the public. The voters, he says, will be able to relate to him as a family man when he pushes his stances on bringing values, but not religion, into the school curriculum, implementing a collaboration between public and private hospitals for health care, and working with federal agencies to reduce crime in the state.

“If we win this race, it’ll be because of Nike. Right now he’s the star of the show,” he says, referring to an ad in which he plays basketball with his son.

Despite Georges’ hard-line-meets-softy approach, Stonecipher thinks Georges has little chance of winning, even in a runoff.

“Short of some kind of ‘magic,’ something that cannot be seen by mere mortals, there’s just no way,” he says. “He’s the David Copperfield of the race, but what he’s capable of we don’t know yet. I do know that if he and the other candidates can’t show something we haven’t seen before by the second week of September, they don’t have a chance against Jindal.”

The odds for Georges may not look good on paper at this point, but his friends say when it comes down to the wire there could be some surprises for the other candidates.

“He is a very intelligent man, and keep in mind he’s young. He didn’t have to run right now,” says Danny Hughes, owner of Diversified Group and 30-year friend of Georges. “He wouldn’t have pulled the trigger unless he saw the stars starting to line up.”

Georges isn’t too worried either—or at least he says he isn’t.

“This race is going to be won on TV. That’s what it’s all about. We don’t expect to be within striking distance until Labor Day anyway.”

He flashes that one-cheek smile again. “But in a few weeks, it’ll be gut-checking time.”