director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a 17-member panel charged with devising plans to reform Medicare. In 1999, at the request of the Louisiana governor's office and the Louisiana State Legislature, Jindal examined how Louisiana might use its $4.4 billion share of the tobacco settlement. In 1998, Jindal received the Samuel S. Beard Award for greatest public service by an individual 35 years old or under, an award given annually by Jefferson Awards. At 28 years of age in 1999, Jindal was appointed to become the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System, the nation's 16th largest system of higher education with over 80,000 students. Bush administration In March 2001, he was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation. He was later unanimously confirmed by a vote of the United States Senate and began serving on July 9, 2001. In that position, he served as the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He resigned from that post on February 21, 2003, to return to Louisiana and run for governor. He was assigned to help fight the nurse shortage by examining steps to improve nursing education. 2003 election for governor Jindal came to national prominence during the 2003 election for governor of Louisiana. In what Louisianans call an "open primary" (but which is technically a nonpartisan blanket primary), Jindal finished first with 33 percent of the vote. He received endorsements from the largest paper in Louisiana, the Times-Picayune; the newly elected Democratic mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin; and the outgoing Republican governor, Mike Foster. In the second balloting, Jindal faced the outgoing lieutenant governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Lafayette, a Democrat. Despite winning in Blanco's hometown, he lost many normally conservative parishes in north Louisiana, and Blanco prevailed with 52 percent of the popular vote. Some political analysts blamed Jindal's loss for his refusal to answer questions targeted at his religion and ethnic background brought up in several Democratic advertisements, which the Jindal campaign called "negative attack ads." Despite losing the election in 2003, the run for governor made Jindal a well-known figure on the state's political scene and a rising star within the Republican Party. U.S. House of Representatives (2005–2008) Elections 2004 A few weeks after the 2003 gubernatorial runoff, Jindal decided to run for Louisiana's