we saw that...

Boasso's ad features Lynn McNiece of Slidell describing what occurred to her brother, John McNiece, at Fountain Manor Nursing Home when Jindal was health secretary.

McNiece says she trusted the agency to care for her brother. "But while he was director, Bobby Jindal threw my brother out on the streets and no one bothered to even call me. For two weeks I just about went crazy not knowing where he was," she says in the ad.

Later in the ad, McNiece says, "Bobby Jindal has no heart. He couldn't have had a heart to put people out of nursing homes and cut mental health care for people in the state that so desperately need it. If I could tell Bobby Jindal anything, I would tell him, 'Shame on you, shame on you.' "

Jindal said he had no recollection of McNiece's case and took offense at the ad's characterization of him as "heartless." "This isn't a discussion of my record," Jindal said. "This is a distortion and a misrepresentation."
[...]
Jindal's ad does not address the underlying facts in the Boasso ad.

Court rules for McNiece
In an interview McNiece said her brother was "in his 50s but had the mind of a child" when he was turned down for Medicaid benefits by the state health department and subsequently discharged from the nursing home.

After the agency denied McNiece a second time in an administrative appeal, his case was taken up by the Advocacy Center in New Orleans, which filed a lawsuit in federal court to have the decision overturned.

In 1998, U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan sided with McNiece, ordering the benefits to be reinstated and ruling that Jindal's agency pay court costs and legal fees. Berrigan wrote that the department was guilty of the "wrongful denial of Medicaid assistance" to John McNiece.

The ad, which is costing Boasso's campaign about $430,000, started running in all media markets in the state Tuesday and is expected to run through Monday, Boasso campaign spokesman Brian Welsh said.

Lynn McNiece said she contacted the state Democratic Party after she saw a commercial for Jindal, a two-term GOP congressman from Kenner, saying he favors tougher laws against criminals who hurt children.

"My brother was somebody's child," she said. "He was my child, and before that he was my mother's child. I just wanted to remind people who this man is."

She said neither the Boasso campaign nor the Democratic Party paid her to do the commercial. "They didn't offer me any money, I didn't ask for any, and I didn't get a penny," she said.