Sanborn mailer recalls infamous Willie Horton ad
The state Senate District 9 rematch between incumbent Andy Sanborn (R-Bedford) and Democrat Lee Nyquist has turned ugly. Sanborn has unleashed a series of negative mail pieces and a companion website accusing Nyquist of being an unscrupulous lawyer who is seeking political office for personal gain to promote a “liberal, Obama-centered agenda.”
The most provocative of the mailers pairs a smiling Nyquist with a hooded, dark-skinned man holding a gun. “Trial lawyer Lee Nyquist started his career by getting a would-be cop killer off on technicalities,” it reads, “clients like cocaine dealer and would-be cop killer Jesus Ramos.”
The mailer recalls the 1988 Willie Horton ad, which played on racial fears and portrayed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. The infamous ad, approved by George H. W. Bush’s campaign manager Lee Atwater, featured the menacing mug shot of Horton, an African-American convicted of assault, armed robbery and rape while out on a prison furlough.
In a 1981 interview with political scientist Alexander Lamis, Atwater explained the strategy of dog-whistle politics that would produce the Willie Horton ad seven years later. “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” Atwater explained. "By 1968 you can’t say 'nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.”
In 1991, a gravely ill Atwater apologized to Dukakis for his role in making the Willie Horton ad. “[B]ecause it makes me sound racist, which I am not,” he said.