Word: blancos
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...Louisiana's university systems. Two years later, he served in the Bush Administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. He first ran for governor in 2003 at the age of 32, losing by a mere four percentage points to current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco. That defeat was attributed to his relative lack of elective experience and the potential racial discomfort in the state's rural north. Blanco, whose fortunes fell rapidly after the perceived bungling of her administration during and following Katrina, decided not to run for reelection, leaving the race open for Jindal...
...congressional seat in Louisiana's first district. Since then, the staunch conservative - who converted from Hinduism to Catholicism as a teenager - has traveled often to northern Louisiana, hitting up churches and pressing the flesh. The strategy appears to have worked, as Jindal handily won the areas he lost to Blanco four years ago and that heavily supported white supremacist David Duke's bid for the governorship in 1991. Perhaps realizing the difficulties of running to lead a state that has by and large elected white males to higher office, Jindal worked to minimize the significance of his ethnicity...
...always glorious, but it has a singular sting for Spanish athletes who stand up to receive their gold medals and championship trophies: their national anthem has no lyrics. "For years we've been hearing from athletes that they feel a little lame up there on the podium," says Alejandro Blanco, president of Spain's Olympics Committee. "All they can do is sing along with 'la la la.'" In an attempt to rectify the situation, the Committee, working with the Society of Authors and Writers, has opened a contest to put words to the Spanish national anthem. The winning entry will...
...Olympic Committee, however, takes a more benign view. "No song is going to win over everyone," Blanco admits. "But sports bring people together." So far, over 5000 entries have been received - proof, he says, that "Spaniards have really taken to this idea." After the deadline for submissions closes on October 26, a jury of specialists will convene in November to decide the winner. "It's possible we could be hearing them sung in Beijing," says Blanco...
...greatest unknown is the degree to which voter apathy will affect the race. With Vitter recently shamed by revelations that he had previously paid prostitutes for sex, U.S. Congressman William Jefferson facing trial for corruption in January, and Nagin and Blanco considered by many to be irrelevant at best and outright failures at worst, voters may have decided that the entire electoral process is pointless. "I would contend that we're headed for a historically low turnout, which is the opposite of what we would have expected in Louisiana in 2007," says Shreveport demographer and political analyst Elliott Stonecipher...