As ads attacking presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris began running in battleground states this week, a familiar theme emerged: “She let an MS-13 gang member go, who then murdered a father and his two sons,” warns the narrator in a Make America Great Again Inc. PAC ad, referring to her record as district attorney in San Francisco. “She agreed to release another felon, who then committed murder.” In other words, Trump supporters are making good on their plans to “Willie Horton” Harris — a reference to a 1988 television spot that changed the politics of criminal justice for decades.What does it mean to “Willie Horton” a political candidate?
In 2015, The Marshall Project dug deep into the history of that notorious ad to find out, talking at length to William Horton himself. At that time, it was not outlandish to ask whether this particular type of ad — sensationalizing isolated bad acts by people (usually people of color) released from prisons or jails, and pinning the blame for them on individual candidates — had run its course. After the very public police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and the nation’s reckoning with mass incarceration and police brutality, politicians were newly, tentatively, willing to explore bold criminal justice reforms. But the past is never really past, and 1988 is beginning to echo in the halls of 2024. As for the Trump PAC ad, for the record: The MS-13 gang member the ad refers to was let go because, Harris’ office said at the time, there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with a crime; months later, he did commit a triple homicide. It’s not clear what case the “felon who then committed murder” refers to.
Here are three key things to know about the history of “Willie Horton” attack ads:
“Willie Horton” was the subject of a 1988 political ad created by supporters of then-vice president and Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush.
William Horton had been serving a life sentence for murder in a Massachusetts prison when he was released temporarily on a furlough and didn’t return. While on the run, he committed a brutal home invasion and rape. Bush was running for the presidency against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat, and the ad pinned the blame for Horton’s crimes on Dukakis’ furlough policy.
“Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty,” the narrator intoned, “he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison.” A grainy black-and-white photo of Horton appeared on the screen, with heavy-lidded eyes and an unkempt beard. The ad never mentioned Horton’s race, but it didn’t have to: Amid historically high violent crime rates, this image of Horton played to White fears and deeply rooted racist stereotypes.