Senate contest brought down to race attack

WASHINGTON - The Senate race in Tennessee - already one of the most bitter and potentially decisive battles in the mid-term election campaign - has been thrown into new turmoil by a race-tinged Republican attack advert against the Democrat bidding to become the first black Senator from the south since Reconstruction.

The ad, which bears the specific imprimatur of the Republican National Committee, has now been pulled - but not before a firestorm of criticism that it was a deliberate effort in a predominantly white state to stir unease about inter-racial dating, and turn opinion against Harold Ford, the Democratic candidate.

The 30-second spot shows people commenting sarcastically on Ford's stance on gun ownership, taxes and terrorism. So far, nothing very unusual, in a campaign in which the advertising has been dirty even by America's hardened standards of negativity. But then comes the segment which has stirred controversy.

"I met Harold at the Playboy party," coos a scantily dressed woman, referring to Ford's attendance (with some 3000 others) at a party hosted by the men's magazine during the 2005 Superbowl in Jacksonville, Florida.

The ad ends with a final clip of the white woman, winking at the camera and saying, "Harold, call me."

On the face of it, not especially incendiary, given that Ford is single, only 36 years old, and by any reckoning handsome. But in a part of the country where old racial stereotypes live on, and have been exploited in years past by white candidates facing African-American opponents, it has proved explosive.

Critics say it is even more blatant than ads run in 1996 by the arch-conservative white supremacist Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina to defeat a challenge by Harvey Gantt, the black, then-Mayor of Charlotte.

Back in 1988, Republicans wheeled out the now infamous "Willie Horton" ads, featuring a paroled black murderer, to attack that year's Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis for being soft on crime.

Harold Ford has dismissed the ad as an act of desperation by Bob Corker, his Republican opponent.

"You know your opponent is scared when his main opposition against you is, 'My opponent likes girls'."

Yesterday William Cohen, former Defence Secretary and Republican Senator, condemned the ad as "a very serious appeal to racist sentiment". But party spokesmen insisted the ad was taken off the air because it had "run its course".

The Tennessee contest, with those in Virginia and Missouri, are in previously Republican-held seats in the northern South that will determine control of the Senate.

To make the net gain of six they need for a majority, the Democrats will have to win at least two. All three are currently neck and neck. Latest polls show Corker has regained a narrow lead of three or four points, but well within the statistical margin of error.

Ford, who comes from a prominent political family, has fought a skilful campaign, playing down his relatively liberal voting record in Washington, where he has been a Congressman for the Memphis district since 1996.

In a socially conservative state, he promises voters "I will never take away your Bible or your gun."

- INDEPENDENT