Gov. Bobby Jindal says he doesn’t feel any pressure to rush his expected announcement as a Republican presidential candidate even as the field vying for the nomination is growing by the day.
“I’ve never worried about the other candidates in any of my races,” Jindal told The Shreveport Times on Tuesday. “We’ll make our decision, as we’ve said all along, sometime after the (Louisiana) legislative session ends June 11.”
On Monday, former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson announced they will seek the Republican nomination; they were followed on Tuesday by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The three joined U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, who announced their candidacies earlier.
And at least six others, including Jindal, are expected to join the field this summer. But Jindal, who already is making frequent trips to early caucus and primary states Iowa and New Hampshire, doesn’t think they’ll have a head start.
“I’m different from everybody else who is thinking about running because they’re thinking about what the next president needs to do; I’ve already presented detailed plans through America Next (the conservative policy group Jindal formed last year) of what I would do,” he said. “Too many of the candidates are talking to pollsters and consultants to decide what they need to do. If I were to run I’d be ready to do the job on the first day. I have detailed plans to do things like repeal and replace Obamacare, rebuild the middle class and reshape our foreign policy.”
Though Jindal has struggled getting traction in the early polls—those polls that have included him, that is—he has seemed to make headway recently with evangelical conservatives, especially in Iowa.
But Huckabee, a Baptist minister, will also court those evangelicals, which he did successfully in 2008 when he won eight states during that Republican primary season. Jindal dismissed the suggestion that Huckabee would peel off those evangelicals or that he was appealing only to a narrow group.
“If I were to run I would try to appeal to 100% of the voters,” Jindal said. “I’m not concerned about pollsters or candidates who want to divide voters up into groups.”
