Rapist Felon Plans To Give Kamala Harris The Willie Horton Treatment

Harris is no Dukakis.

Donald Trump’s campaign is reeling after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race last Sunday. They are struggling to define Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in ways that aren’t overtly racist or sexist. (Watch the latest rotating example below.)

Barack Obama handily won election twice despite eight years of gross racist attacks, and it took more than 30 years of concentrated misogyny, deranged conspiracy theories, and Russian interference to defeat Hillary Clinton.

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Republicans have tried to pin their contrived crisis at the border on Harris, who they claim failed as the Biden administration’s “border czar,” a nonexistent position she doesn’t hold. She was never put in charge of immigration policy or border enforcement. That inconvenient fact hasn’t stopped Rep. Andy Ogles from introducing articles of impeachment against Harris for high crimes and misdemeanors. This stunt will likely go nowhere because Speaker Mike Johnson has already given the House a month off from its important work as a national nuisance.

Kamala Harris Breaks Barriers, Plus Some Dummies' Heads

The Trump campaign seems to think its best bet is painting Harris as a radical socialist commie. They plan to attack Harris’s record as a prosecutor and her positions on criminal justice. That’s amusing considering the Republican nominee is a convicted criminal who dodges justice. Back in 2020, Harris supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which helped provide bail for people arrested during the George Floyd police violence protests. Trump is a convicted felon, and the only reason he’s not in prison right now prior to sentencing is because he was allowed bail. Although his espionage case was dismissed, he’s still out on bail for his coup-related cases. He should film personal testimonials about bail: “Hi, I’m Donald Trump. Have you been indicted on multiple felony charges and need to post bond quickly? If so, my friend Eddy Armando is your guy.”

When Harris was San Francisco district attorney, she refused to seek the death penalty for a man who murdered a police officer. He was sentenced to life, so it’s not as if Harris lets criminals walk free like Judge Aileen Cannon. California hasn’t executed a prisoner since 2006 anyway. Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019, and he likely processes most of his moves through the lens of a potential swing voter in a national election.

Harris’s office gave probation to a man in 2007 who later assassinated Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey. Trump is eager to make Devaughndre Broussard the next Willie Horton — perhaps with a literal name change as I imagine he’ll have trouble pronouncing “Devaughndre Broussard.” A Trump adviser ghoulishly called the cases “several Willie Hortons,” and it’s obvious he’s more concerned with exploiting the victims for political gain.

What’s the going rate for ‘several Willie Hortons’?

Willie Horton was a convicted murder serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for killing 17-year-old gas station attendant Joseph Fournier. Horton and two other accomplices (the legal term is “sick bastards”) stabbed Fournier 19 times after he’d cooperated and handed over the money from the cash register. They stuffed his body in a trash can, his feet jammed against his chin. He died from blood loss.

Horton was released on June 6, 1986 as part of a weekend furlough program but never returned. The next year, Horton, a Black man, raped Angela Barnes, a white woman, in Maryland after pistol-whipping, stabbing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. It was something out of Criminal Minds. He was eventually captured and sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life sentences plus 85 years. Willie Horton was born the same year as my late mother, but he’s still alive. I feel like God should let me make a trade.

The Massachusetts furlough program permitted first-degree murderers, after serving an average of 10 years in prison, to take up to 48 hours off from prison. This was an unguarded release, unlike Eddie Murphy’s character in the movie 48 Hours (who was a bank robber, not a murderer). Horton had received nine furloughs under this policy, but it was the tenth that made political history.

Although the furlough program became law in 1972 under Republican Gov. Francis Sargent, Democrat Mike Dukakis was governor when Willie Horton escaped, so the George H.W. Bush campaign seized on this as an example to paint his 1988 presidential opponent as a soft-on-crime liberal. Dukakis had resisted ending the program after Horton escaped but not because he was pro-rape: Horton’s release was an obvious mistake, considering his prison record, but that didn’t necessarily mean every prisoner eligible for a furlough was a potential Willie Horton. As the New York Times reported in 1988, the larger debate was over “acceptable risk”:

Since the program began, 10,835 inmates have participated; 428 of them escaped and 219 returned late, according to the State Department of Corrections. Fourteen of them are still at large. No more than 55 inmates serving life without parole participated in the furlough program in any given year, according to the state; 11 of them have escaped, including Mr. Horton. Of those 11, 5 were convicted of other crimes committed after they escaped, according to a state legislative report, and one is still at large.

The problem for the overly academic Dukakis is that the best statistics often prove the worst politics. “Whoever said I was an acceptable statistic?” asked Angela Barnes in a Times story that was probably just as damning for Dukakis’s campaign as the infamous “Willie Horton ad.”

The moment George H.W. Bush became president

One particularly devastating ad begins with a close-up of Donna Cuomo, Joseph Fournier’s sister, who speaks directly to the camera and says, “Willie Horton stabbed my teenage brother 19 times. Joey died. Horton was sentenced to life without parole but Dukakis gave him a furlough.”

Cliff Barnes then describes how Willie Horton “changed our lives forever.” He claimed that Dukakis “simply looked away” once “his liberal experiment failed.” Barnes also reminded voters that Dukakis had vetoed a death penalty bill in 1975. It’s no coincidence that “new” Democrat Bill Clinton openly supported the death penalty. (Al Gore brought up the furlough program during the Democratic primary but only vaguely, and he never mentioned Horton by name! Maybe if he had, he might’ve faced Bush in the general election instead and perhaps spared us Clarence Thomas.)

What most people recall as the “Willie Horton” ad, though, is at least more subtle than your average Fox News broadcast.

Stating that Bush supports the death penalty but Dukakis does not, the spot shows Willie Horton’s picture and details his crimes. The furlough program sounded absurd to most normal voters — almost an over-the-top parody like Gotham State Prison Warden Crichton with his “progressive policies” on the 1960s Batman TV show. Of course, whenever Cesar Romero’s Joker escaped, he didn’t rape anyone and he only tried to murder Batman with exciting death traps.

Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, dying from an inoperable brain tumor in 1991, apologized to Dukakis for his tactics that extended Republican rule of the White House: “In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said that I ‘would strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his running mate.’ I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.”

Willie Horton is how Dukakis’ 17-point lead in the polls became an eight-point Bush rout.

Why Harris isn’t Dukakis

Devaughndre Broussard was a first-time offender and probation was consistent with his crime. Willie Horton deliberately and viciously murdered someone before he was offered weekend furloughs.

Harris is also a far better politician than Dukakis, who bombed the presidential debate question about whether he would support the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered. His response was called robotic, which is an insult to robots, many of whom are quite personable.

“No, I don’t,” Dukakis said, ending his campaign and perhaps seriously endangering his marriage. “I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it's a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.”

This didn’t address the substance of the question, which is that normal humans are consumed with righteous anger if a loved one is brutally assaulted and murdered. Once you start spouting statistics, you will lose the vital Mammal American electorate. No, I don’t think the state should serve as our personal Dirty Harry, but the best way to counter the very human impulse for vengeance is to humanize the people who are unjustly convicted and executed. That’s your best argument, frankly, because no one cares if you send people like Willie Horton to hell a few decades early.

Harris has done a great job already talking about how she’s advocated for victims as a a prosecutor. Willie Horton is an effective bogeyman against perceived liberal permissiveness that makes suburban voters, especially women, feel less safe. The Trump campaign’s problem, though, is that there’s only one rapist on the presidential ballot this year, and it’s not Kamala Harris.

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