Susana has a post speaking about what some think would be an unlikely candidate in Louisiana.

His campaign has involved attacking abortion, gun control, gay marriage and Hollywood and embracing his Catholic faith and the Ten Commandments. To put it mildly, he's very conservative, and aggressively couriting conservative voters.

He's also the leading candidate in the Louisiana Governor's race.

What's so weird about that, huh? Well, for one...he was born with the name Piyush Jindal, after his parents moved here from New Delhi in 1978.

Hardcore conservative of Indian Descent here in the states? That may not be quite as unusual as you think.

Take a look at Some of the positions held by Dr. Venkat Challa, Also from india. He ran against Dole for the Republican nomination for her current senate seat in 2002. His two biggest issues were calling for an overhaul of the Tax system and a education voucher program to be started.

Yeah, he got obliterated as a candidate in the primaries. no way for a guy with no political background to fight agaisnt the Dole Campaign. But the point is that for recent immigrants from India, these sorts of positions are not that unknown. I work with a sizeable number of Indian Immigrants and Visa Holders, all of them first generation here in the states. Generally, the ones willing to jump through all the hoops to come over here are the brightest, hardest working ones, the ones who were willing and able to do whatever it takes to succeed. In short, the ones most willing to put forth a huge amount of effort and be rewarded for it.

Just the sort of person likely to be fairly conservative. And every one at work that I've spoken about politics seems to be pretty far over on the right on social and economic issues. Not universally on everything, but odds are most of the ones I have talked to were definately on the right side of the aisle.