Don’t forget the legacy of the Willie Horton ad when remembering George H.W. Bush

Since former President George H.W. Bush’s passing, media outlets across Connecticut have featured stories celebrating Bush as our state’s native son. In Connecticut’s editorial and op-ed pages, writers have called him an emblem of “kinder, gentler” politics and “one of the most distinguished citizens in our country’s history.”

These things may be true. But if Connecticut is going to claim any of George H.W. Bush’s positive attributes as belonging to our state, we also need to take responsibility for his role in creating the racist dog whistles that drive politics today, particularly when it comes to criminal justice.

As Rachel Withers wrote in Vox, George H.W. Bush’s infamous Willie Horton ad was not the first racist political tactic, but it defined his presidential campaign. More importantly, it was the nexus for a particular type attack that we still see today: a political strategy focused on demonizing black and brown people, stoking white fear and rage, and promoting ineffective, biased, expensive and dangerous criminal justice policies.

Politicians in Connecticut are still using Bush’s playbook. In her failed bid to become the state’s next attorney general (a position that has nothing to do with criminal justice, as Connecticut’s attorney general only has jurisdiction over civil, not criminal, matters), Susan Hatfield ran the modern version of a Willie Horton ad. In one TV spot, Hatfield attempted to undermine her opponent — William Tong, a man of color, attorney, and former chairperson of the state legislature’s judiciary committee — as incapable of serving because he had never prosecuted “a criminal,” something he would never have to do in his role as attorney general.

While ominous music played over stark black and white images, Hatfield’s ad implied that a tragic triple murder in the state was the result of the Tong-supported earned risk reduction credit program, an initiative that allows some people who are incarcerated to earn time off of their sentences if they participate in certain programs.

In Hatfield’s Willie Horton world, the facts were incidental. The man accused of killing those three people was not released through the earned risk reduction credit program, Hatfield was running for an office that had no prosecutorial authority, and the root causes of crime are far more complicated than a single policy. The point was, Hatfield’s campaign believed she could win over Connecticut voters by using a Latino man from a Connecticut city who was accused of a horrific crime to try to stoke suburban white rage, fear, and resentment of an opponent who supported smarter approaches to justice.

Luckily, there are signs that Connecticut voters are ready to reject this backward political playbook.

Hatfield lost, albeit barely. Len Suzio, a state legislator who similarly campaigned and legislated on a 1980s approach to justice, was rejected by voters in his district. Bob Stefanowski, who proposed eliminating the earned risk reduction credit program, lost his bid for governor. When asked, Connecticut voters, including members of Bush’s Republican party, overwhelmingly supported the earned risk reduction credit program and other smarter approaches to justice.

Connecticut can go ahead and embrace George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” and cute socks. But we also must be honest about his role in using racism to further incarceration policies that are still harming millions of Americans. To do that, voters, policymakers, and media professionals must speak out against and reject Willie Horton-style attacks whenever we see them today.