Orange County Register

Floyd Brown set a milestone in political attack ads with his 1988 “Willie Horton” TV spot, which may have been the straw that broke the back of Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid. You may recall that Dukakis once supported a weekend inmate release plan that allowed convicted murderer Horton a few hours of freedom, during which Horton raped a woman.

Brown has been at it ever since. He held court in a backroom at Irvine’s Il Fornaio restaurant on Friday to raise money to fund his latest attacks on Barack Obama. It was a last-minute event with just eight people on hand, including me. Brown said he’d never had a reporter at such a meeting before.

He showed a few of his ads, including one you can see on YouTube by clicking here or by typing “Group Launches Obama ‘Willie Horton’ Ad” into the search field. It details three tragic 2001 homicides in Chicago that were attributed to gang members. It then criticizes Obama for voting against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders. It then asks if Obama wouldn’t be soft on terrorism as well.

(Obama, who supports the death penalty in general, defended his vote by saying it would disproportionately effect blacks and Latinos.)

Clare Venegas was one of two people at the lunch on behalf of the well-heeled Lincoln Club, a prospective donor. She seemed a little wary of how aggressive Brown could be.

“Is it going to step over the line in terms of perception and turn people away?” she asked.

Brown responded by defending attack ads in general.

“People say, ‘Have you seen that horrible ad? You have to see it.’”

Joining Brown in defense of the negative ads was Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine.

“Poll after poll shows it works,” said DeVore, who is leading one of the groups backing Brown’s ads – although not the one described above.

Money raised in California for the ads will be spend in California, Brown said. According to DeVore, that’s important even if Obama is a clear winner here, because it will help stimulate GOP turnout for more competitive down-ticket races.

But Brown was also dangling the possibility that John McCain could make a race of it in the state, which typically gives the Democratic nominee an easy win.

“Our research showed us that if Obama was the nominee, California could be very close to being in play,” he said.

Brown thinks there’s a particular opportunity to turn Latinos against Obama.

“I think it would be great to do a Spanish radio” ad campaign, he said. “Completely under the radar.”

Then somebody nodded toward me.

“Except for maybe one article,” he replied.

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