KENNER, La. – After more than a year spent campaigning out-of-state on the taxpayers’ dime, and months of time wasted in the legislature attempting to curry favor with GOP power-brokers, Gov. Bobby Jindal finally made it official today and declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. As a late entrant to an extraordinarily crowded field, Jindal carries the baggage of his dismal record of failure as governor and polling numbers hovering in the low 0% range. The vanity campaign he formally kicked off in Kenner can be expected to have no actual impact on the 2016 race for president.
In making his candidacy official, Jindal attempted to tout his record as governor. Unfortunately for him, neither the voters of his state nor the facts are on his side. Under seven years of his failed policies, the state economy has suffered staggering losses and began the year with the third-highest unemployment in the nation. His gross negligence and fiscal irresponsibility saddled our state with a $1.6 billion budget deficit this year, a structural gap he bullied the legislature into papering over with what one Republican lawmaker called “a money-laundering scheme.”
“Governor Jindal has failed Louisiana in every way possible, and there’s no reason to believe he will have any more success as a candidate than he did as governor,” said state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, chairwoman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “His record of failure disqualifies him from higher office right out of the gate, and his pattern of divisiveness and cynical, partisan manipulation is likely to make for a short campaign.”
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