Who is Floyd Brown? He’s best known for creating the infamous, race-baiting Willie Horton television ad targeting Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign.

But the Republican political operative has a long, sordid history of engaging in political dirty tricks to slime Democratic candidates. During the 1992 presidential campaign, he headed up an organization called the Presidential Victory Committee. The group’s relentless hounding of the family of Susan Coleman — a former law student of Bill Clinton who committed suicide — was the subject of an exposé by CBS News. Coleman was seven months pregnant at the time of her death and had been rumored to have had an affair with Clinton. The Bush campaign denounced Brown and his associates at the time as “the lowest forms of life.”

During the 2008 presidential primary contest, Brown released an ad targeting North Carolina voters that blamed Barack Obama for gang murders in Chicago. Salon columnist Joe Conason noted at the time that the political operative “has given conservatism a rank smell for two decades.” Brown created another ad suggesting that Obama was a Muslim.

Since then Brown has gone on to run a web site called ExposeObama.com. The site is currently promoting a campaign to impeach Obama for purported “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Brian Melendez, chairman of the DFL Party, issued a statement today attacking Pawlenty for associating with Brown. “Governor Pawlenty has aligned himself with the dirtiest parts of the Republican political machine as he campaigns around the country,” Melendez said. “And meanwhile, who is in charge at the statehouse?”

While polls this early in the election cycle are likely gauges of name recognition more than solid support, it suggests that Pawlenty has considerable work to do if he’s going to become a household name in national GOP circles. Which might explain why he called into his own radio show this morning from California, where he’s attending the Western Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Rasmussen Reports poll surveyed 750 likely GOP voters across the country and had a sampling error of +/- four percentage points.