How Bobby Jindal's meteoric rise in GOP ended with him crashing down to earth
Washington At 24, Bobby Jindal, an Ivy League graduate and Rhodes scholar, was picked by Gov. Mike Foster to head the state Department of Health and Hospitals, commanding an agency with 12,000 employees that accounted for 40 percent of the state budget.
At 28, he was appointed the youngest president of the University of Louisiana System.
A couple years later, President George W. Bush named him assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, making him the DHH directors chief policy adviser.
In 2003, still just 32, Jindal entered electoral politics as a Republican candidate for governor. He led the open primary but lost the runoff, in what soon looked like a brief hiccup in a meteoric career. He was elected to Congress the next year and, in 2007, swept the field in his second run for governor, taking office as the youngest governor in the country. He easily won re-election in 2011.
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