• Time, Thursday, April 24, 2008 10:30 AM

The ad man behind the infamous "Willie Horton" ad that did so much damage to Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign is back, and this time he is going after Sen. Barack Obama. A cadre of conservative activists led by Floyd Brown, who created the Horton spot, has launched a campaign to portray the Illinois Democrat as soft on crime and terrorism in an attempt to hurt his relatively strong reputation among Republican voters.

"The campaign by Hillary Clinton has not been able to raise Obama's negatives," says Brown. "It is absolutely critical that Obama's negatives go up with Republicans." An initial effort will feature a 30-second spot called "Victims" to air later this month in North Carolina, while also being e-mailed to millions of conservatives this week as part of a fund-raising effort.

The ad portrays the deaths of three Chicago residents at the hands of criminal gangs in 2001 and says: "That same year, a Chicago state senator named Barack Obama voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders," going on to question whether "a man so weak in the war on gangs [can] be trusted in the war on terror?"

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