The death of former president George H.W. Bush brought eulogies from across the political spectrum, but for many blacks, his legacy is tainted by the fact that part of his successful bid for the presidency included one of the most infamous political ads in history, one that stoked racial stereotypes that continue to shape criminal justice policy years later, reports the Washington Post. The ad was part of a Bush strategy in his 1988 campaign to portray his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime. Massachusetts offered a furlough program for some prisoners, a common practice. William Horton, a murderer serving a life sentence, was granted a weekend furlough in 1986 but did not return to prison. Nearly a year later, he turned up in Maryland, where he had bound, gagged and stabbed a man in his home, raped his fiancee and escaped in a car belonging to the man. The “Willie Horton ad,” titled “Weekend Passes” was aired an independent expenditure in support of Bush’s campaign.
Bush spoke frequently about Horton in reference to Dukakis’s record on crime. Months before the ad aired, the Post wrote that when Bush picked prison furloughs as a “rhetorical hammer” to bash Dukakis, “he seemed to have his hands on a near-perfect campaign issue. The idea of giving ‘weekend passes’ to imprisoned murderers sounded straightforward enough to explain in a single sentence — just right for TV news — and it seemed to place Dukakis well to the left of the mainstream.” Some political strategists think the ad is what put the nail in the coffin for Dukakis. Before the 2018 elections, President Trump effectively reintroduced the Horton ad by tweeting an ad blaming Democrats for the criminal activity of Luis Bracamontes, a twice-deported undocumented Mexican immigrant who murdered two law enforcement officers.