Expect Gov. Bobby Jindal to keep peering beyond state line: Stephanie Grace

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on January 08, 2012 at 7:26 AM, updated January 08, 2012 at 7:37 AM
Bobby JindalLouisiana Governor Bobby Jindal greets lawmakers in Baton Rouge.

When Gov. Bobby Jindal built his second-term re-election campaign around his first-term record, he basically promised voters more of the same. And in the days leading up to his Monday inauguration, he's made it clear that's just what he plans to deliver.

So get ready for four more years of Jindal claiming he has the only job he wants, even as his actions suggest that life beyond Baton Rouge is very much on his mind.

It's not just Jindal's well-documented travels to key presidential states like Iowa and Missouri that hint at his ongoing national ambitions. It's also his policy proposals back home.

While Jindal knows how to multi-task, some of his first-term fights were clearly driven by national politics. Most glaring was his all-out effort to prevent a tiny tobacco tax from being renewed, despite a dearth of identifiable opposition, even from most fiscal conservatives. The only sensible rationale was that Jindal wanted to keep his anti-tax record pristine, a virtual requirement in national GOP politics these days.

The biggest news to break about Jindal's second term agenda -- that he plans to push for a significant expansion of private school vouchers -- suggests that Jindal is at it again.

Like staunch opposition to taxes, vouchers too are near and dear to national movement conservatives' hearts.

The curious thing is that they haven't been the topic of much recent discussion here in Louisiana -- including during Jindal's just-completed campaign.

Jindal did talk up K-12 education reform as a top priority, but other than a parallel effort to link teachers' performance to job security, he stuck to a more generalized advocacy of school choice. Since the vast expansion of charter schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, such discussions in the state have mostly focused on competition between public schools.

Not that Jindal hasn't been a longtime voucher proponent. His 2010 political tome, "Leadership and Crisis," touts both charters and "scholarship programs." In 2008, he pushed the Legislature to establish a limited voucher system, only in Orleans Parish and only for students in failing schools.

Still, the success of the charter movement in New Orleans has gone a long way toward undermining the idea that funneling taxpayer money to private schools is the only way to give parents options and rescue kids from dead-end schools.

Besides, if this was one of his main policy goals, shouldn't he have tried to sell it to the voters before they headed to the polls? No matter his winning margin or his popularity rating, it's hard to claim a mandate for an idea that a politician didn't campaign on, or to argue that he's responding to some sort of groundswell.

In fact, even as he prepares to start his second term, Jindal still hasn't spoken publicly about the idea. Instead, he's been meeting behind closed doors with state officials and education stakeholders, some of whom outlined the governor's plan to Times-Picayune education reporter Andrew Vanacore.

At this point, it's not clear what shape an expanded program would take. Would it be limited to low-income families or students in failing schools or more widely available? How would private schools that get the public money be held to accountability standards?

Nor is it at all clear whether the idea has legs. Opposition from teacher unions is a given, but the proposal may well generate concern far beyond the usual suspects. Money is already tight, and if the proposed voucher program would be financed by diverting the state's per-pupil Minimum Foundation Program allocation away from public schools, as expected, it would have far-reaching implications for districts across the state.

The one thing that's obvious is that Jindal is playing to a much wider audience than just Louisiana voters. In other words, he may be embarking on a new term, but he's up to his same old tricks.

