McCain Plays Horton-Like Race Card: Dukakis

Michael Dukakis says John McCain is using the same race-based tactics that sunk the Massachusetts Democrat’s 1988 presidential campaign, PolitickerMA reports. Dukakis cites an ad that criticizes Barack Obama’s supposed economic advisor, disgraced Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who’s also black. Dukakis called the spot “essentially” similar to the Willie Horton ads used to paint him as soft on crime.

That ad, run by a third party during Dukakis’ campaign against George H.W. Bush, described the rape of a white woman by Horton, a black convict, while on a weekend furlough that Dukakis supported as governor of Massachusetts. Dukakis stressed that Raines was not a close economic advisor to Obama, and that his prominence in the ad was racially motivated. (More Election 2008 stories.)