The Politics of the Death Penalty in Campaign 2000

Campaign 2000 will turn on many themes, one of which may well be capital punishment--but if that theme does emerge, it will be in an interesting new form.

This complex issue has both religious and political dimensions. The Democrats traditionally were opposed to capital punishment, and the Republicans traditionally favored it. There was a shift in the common wisdom, however, in 1992. The Democrats, having not possessed the White House for 12 years, decided that their best chance for victory was to make an obvious tilt toward the center. The issue chosen on which to make this shift obvious was capital punishment. Then-Gov. Bill Clinton broke off his presidential campaign to preside over the Arkansas execution of a convicted murderer. His message was: This is no longer the party of George McGovern.

So with little difference between the parties on this issue, it faded.

That was the situation as Campaign 2000 began. Vice President Al Gore, following President Clinton's lead, announced his support of capital punishment. Gov. George W. Bush had made his support of capital punishment a major plank in his two successful campaigns for the governorship of Texas. Capital punishment appeared thus to be a non-issue.

But one never knows what a campaign will bring forth during an election, or in what form even old issues will be framed, particularly when legions of people search the public records for a way to cast their opponent in a negative light.

So it was that Democrats looking at the number of public executions carried out in Texas--a figure significantly higher than any other state--began to suggest that it's one thing to be in favor of capital punishment and quite another to be gung ho for mass killings. Early in 1998, a woman named Karla Faye Tucker, who had committed two horrific murders in Houston in 1983 and subsequently been sentenced to die, was scheduled for execution in Texas. But in the ensuing 15 years, Tucker had blossomed in prison into a pretty born-again Christian who eventually married a prison chaplain. The leaders of the religious right, seduced by her born-again designation, appealed to Gov. Bush to commute her sentence. He declined. She was put to death.

A slight chink in the alliance between the religious right and the Republican candidate appeared, but it was too early in the campaign to make it seem critical. So it was simply filed away.

The thing that made that particular execution linger in the public memory was that this person broke the stereotype people have in their minds of those who populate death row. This was no Willie Horton, the issue George Bush had in 1988 ridden so successfully in his White House campaign against Michael Dukakis. This death row inmate was white, not black. She was female, not male. She was a born again Christian.

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