In Wisconsin’s 8th District race, Mike Gallagher is out with a new campaign spot that’s grabbing attention – for being a “Willie Horton-style smear” designed to scare people. This tactic has been widely condemned ever since it was first employed in 1988, but that doesn’t stop Mike Gallagher from pulling out all the stops in a tightening race against Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson.
This is not the first misleading ad Gallagher has aired; his false attacks against Nelson in one of many negative ads he’s run earned him a “False” rating for his lies about Nelson’s plan to protect Social Security.
“Mike Gallagher should be ashamed of himself,” said Sacha Haworth of the DCCC. “Finding himself unable to defend his continued support of Donald Trump – even as women continue to come forward alleging Trump sexually assaulted them – Mike Gallagher is tearing a page out of the 1980s and deploying despicable racist attacks. He should immediately apologize, and take down this shameful ad.”
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ICYMI
Wisconsin Republican deploys Willie Horton-style smear
Think Progress
10/21/2016
An ad tries to link an early-release program to a nonexistent crime wave.
Weeks after the Republican National Committee deployed a Willie Horton-style attack on Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, a Republican congressional candidate in Wisconsin is using the widely decried tactic as well.
In a new ad, Mike Gallagher, the Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district, smears Democratic candidate Tom Nelson for voting in favor of a program that gives the Department of Corrections the authority to grant early release to inmates convicted of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.
Nelson, the County Executive of Outagamie County, served in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 2005–2011. He was elected Assembly Majority Leader in 2008 — the year before the legislature, then under Democratic control, approved the early release program.
The ad begins with two elderly women talking about crime in northeast Wisconsin. “I do lock my doors, which I never did,” says one. “The atmosphere has changed,” says the other.
In truth, serious crime in the region around Green Bay — the largest city in the eighth district — hit a half-decade low this summer.
But Gallagher, a former marine who served as foreign policy aide to Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) during his presidential run, tries to link Nelson to the nonexistent crime wave by fear-mongering about convicts who were released early.
“Tom Nelson voted for early prison release,” the narrator says. “Felons convicted of battery. Burglary. Even homicide. One was released despite warnings of the grave danger he posed. Tom Nelson. Too much risk.”
This style of fear-mongering about convicts was pioneered by an ad put together in 1988 by a political action committee aligned with Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. The ad attacked Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) for the weekend furlough of a black prisoner named Willie Horton who didn’t return to custody and later raped a white woman. It’s remembered as one of the most notorious racial attacks in the history of politics.
Read the rest of the Think Progress piece here.