Huckabee's Willie Horton

Lois Davidson tells her story.



The source of the video is Arkansas Republican, Keith Emis.

Reuters asks:

Will the ghost of Willie Horton haunt the U.S. campaign trail of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee?

As you may recall from the 1988 presidential campaign, Willie Horton was serving life in prison on a murder conviction in Massachusetts and raped a woman in Maryland after he was released in 1986 under a weekend furlough program backed by then-Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis.

Horton was used by the George H.W. Bush presidential campaign to portray Dukakis as weak on crime.

Wayne Dumond may be Mike Huckabee's Willie Horton:

Dumond was serving a life prison term for raping a 17-year-old cheerleader in Arkansas in 1984. In 1996 his appeals for clemency attracted the attention of Huckabee, a Baptist preacher, after the inmate was said to have found religion.

Dumond gained freedom when paroled by the state's parole board -- with Huckabee's endorsement -- and moved to the Kansas City area in 1999.

Less than a year later, Carol Sue Shields died of suffocation, and Dumond was convicted in her murder.

Huckabee blames the Arkansas state parole board, saying the board made the decision to free Dumond:

"Should this guy have been let out in retrospect? No. But at the time, the parole board in making the decision to let him go, felt it was a prudent decision to make," Huckabee said.

According to Reuters, not everybody remembers it that way:

Former state Rep. Pat Flanagin, a Democrat who fought the release of Dumond said:

Huckabee pressured the parole board to free Dumond despite a personal protest from Stevens, who during a meeting pressed her face close to Huckabee's and said this is how close Dumond was to her for an hour.

"It is even more so (like) Willie Horton, because he was given very ample warning about the guy, about his background, about his previous sexual offenses and a murder he was involved in previously," Flanagin said.

Huckabee had better expect a lot of advertising like the above video. Blaming the parole board isn't going to cut it.