JACKSON — Back in the 1988 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis lost to Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush thanks in no small part to a guy named Willie Horton.
Horton, a convicted murderer in Massachusetts, in 1986 twice raped a local woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding and gagging her fiance after failing to return to a Massachusetts prison after a weekend furlough granted by a program that Dukakis supported as governor.
The Bush campaign, led by the late Lee Atwater, hung Willie Horton around the neck of Dukakis in the fall campaign. The ads did the trick. Years later, while dying of brain cancer, Atwater apologized to Dukakis for the Horton ads.
Now, fast forward to this week.
In 2000, while serving as governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee commuted the prison term of Maurice Clemmons after the inmate and a pastor said he had accepted Christ and reformed his life. At the time, Clemmons was serving a 108-year sentence for several felonies.
On Sunday morning, Clemmons allegedly killed four police officers in a coffee shop near Tacoma, Wash. Clemmons was later shot and killed by police.
It’s apparently not Huckabee’s first day in that particular barrel, either. When he ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, Huckabee was slammed for supporting the release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond. Dumond was paroled in 1999, three years after Huckabee became governor and held a private meeting regarding the Dumond case with the parole board.
Dumond moved to Missouri, was charged with rape and murder, and died in prison before standing trial on those charges.
For Republicans, the Willie Horton-type connection of Huckabee to the Tacoma cop killings came as a particularly tough blow. Huckabee has a strong following on his Fox News TV show, a successful talk radio program and is currently on a book tour promoting his newest tome, “A Simple Christmas,” that was No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list on Sunday.
Huckabee’s showing in the Iowa caucuses in 2008 on a shoestring campaign starting with little name recognition put him on every Republican presidential short list for 2012 with Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and, yes, Haley Barbour.
Clearly, Maurice Clemmons is now Mike Huckabee’s Willie Horton.
Is there a Democratic version of Lee Atwater out there willing to hang Maurice Clemmons (and Wayne Dumond) around Huckabee’s neck in any future campaigns? No doubt about it. Heck, in a tight primary, I’m not sure there aren’t some Republicans out there who would be willing to do the same thing.
For Huckabee, the folksy ordained Southern Baptist minister and genuinely nice guy, the Washington murders must seem like a bolt from the blue. But Huckabee’s actions won’t be called into question. It will be his judgment.
If you ever wonder why governors are loathe to get into the pardoning or clemency or commutation business, Clemmons reminded us all why this weekend. Huckabee apparently bought into a jailhouse conversion and that decision may well have cost the former Arkansas governor another shot at the GOP nomination.
