Mass. Mayor to Bobby Jindal: ‘Come and Get Me’

By Sameer Rao Aug 04, 2015

Put simply: Bobby Jindal is pissing a lot of people off. Still. And it might be hurting his reputation (even more).

The Louisiana governor continues to lag in the GOP polls, and two controversial public actions—cutting his state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood, and statements that mayors of so-called "sanctuary cities" (cities whose policies offer protections from deportation for undocumented peoples) should be charged as accomplices to crimes committed by undocumented residents—don’t appear to be helping him usurp Donald Trump’s lead position. 

But his rhetoric is enough to inspire angry replies, like the one from Joe Curtatone. The mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city in the greater Boston area that has the highest population density of any city in New England and a large number of immigrants, swung back at Jindal’s comment on sanctuary cities as the two made separate appearances on Boston Herald Radio yesterday. 

"Come and get me," said Curtatone, adding that Jindal was using the murder of  Kathryn Steinle—the young woman murdered in San Francisco allegedly by an undocumented immigrant who had been released by police despite federal detention requests—to justify hateful rhetoric:

“Unfortunately that terrible incident (in San Francisco) is being used to describe an entire population and its being used by people like Bobby Jindal who say the most absurd, offensive things against one segment of the population. As a society, we have more compassion than that,” 

He also called Jindal "Deputy Barney Fife," after the hapless deputy in "The Andy Griffith Show." 

Jindal retorted in a statement from his campaign, saying that Curtatone’s "laissez-faire attitude is flat out dangerous."

(H/t Boston Herald, Talking Points Memo