Bobby Jindal To Announce Plans For 2016 Presidential Run On June 24: Report

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is expected to announce his presidential run on June 24, according to a media report Wednesday. Jindal’s Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell told Politico news site that the 43-year-old Republican is set to announce his run on a GOP ticket in New Orleans.

Louisiana’s legislative session ends in June, which will allow Jindal to run as a strict cultural conservative. He has previously opposed same-sex marriage, and called for creationism to be taught alongside evolution in schools, a law that was later found unconstitutional.

Jindal currently has a 27 percent approval rating in Louisiana, while 70 percent of the respondents felt the state was moving in the wrong direction.

The two-term governor has also drawn harsh criticism from fiscal conservatives as well as liberals in recent weeks over his state’s $1.6 billion budget shortfall, including possible cuts of up to 80 percent to the Louisiana State University (LSU) system. LSU President F. King Alexander has said that he is considering a plan for financial exigency, a declaration of emergency comparable to bankruptcy.

His foreign policy stance has often been critical of radical Islam. In March, he called for people who held such extremist views to be prohibited from entering the U.S. Muslim groups dismissed the move as politically motivated “fear mongering” ahead of his likely presidential announcement.

He has also been a vocal critic of the ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations over the latter’s nuclear program, and was a signatory of Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton’s letter to Iranian authorities warning of possible rollbacks on any agreement.

“It’s time for our president to have the fortitude to tell the American people the truth about radical Islam and put his political base aside so we can defeat these terrorists,” he wrote in an op-ed for Fox News in February.

Last month, Jindal launched a presidential exploratory committee, an indication that he is gearing up for the White House run.

If he declares his candidacy, Jindal would enter a hotly contested field for the 2016 GOP nomination, alongside other major contenders like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker.

Jindal’s term as governor is set to end in 2016. He was selected as the seventh most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination for the presidential race by the Washington Post in December.