NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 26, 2006
Rove Protégé Behind Racy Tennessee Ad
Controversial RNC Ad Against Harold Ford Jr. Produced By Rove Consultant
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GOP Ad Attacks Harold Ford Jr.
The Tennessee senate race is one of the most competitive in this year's mid-term elections. This ad attacks Democrat Harold Ford Jr. and was paid for by the Republican National Committee.
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Celebrities In Political Ads
A senate race in Missouri is suddenly the talk of the nation because of a TV ad featuring Michael J. Fox. Cynthia Bowers reports that more celebrities are backing candidates.
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Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., left, and Republican Senate candidate Bob Corker are engaged in a contentious campaign that was further ignited when the Republican National Committee sponsored an ad featuring a sexually suggestive white woman talking about Ford. (AP / CBS)
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Democratic candidate for Tennessee Harold Ford Jr. is trying to become the state's first black senator since Reconstruction. (AP Photo)
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The ad, in which a white woman with blonde hair and bare shoulders looks into the camera and whispers, "Harold, call me," and then winks, was produced by Scott Howell, the former political director for Rove's consulting firm in Texas.
The RNC ad doesn't mention that "Harold" is black, but the NAACP and others have complained the commercial makes an implicit appeal to deep-seated racial fears about black men and white women.
The race between Ford Jr. and Republican Bob Corker is among the most competitive and nasty U.S. Senate races in the nation. But it didn't just happen with a racially-charged ad from Republicans, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.
The Democrats struck first weeks ago by playing the class card in an add which states that Corker's "personal income grew by 40 percent to $11 million."
Howell is no stranger to controversy. He was media consultant for Sen. Saxby Chambliss when his campaign ran an ad showing a picture of then-Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
He also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash.
Howell also worked for Republican Jerry Kilgore in last year's Virginia gubernatorial race when Kilgore ran an ad saying that Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn't have used the death penalty against Hitler.
Race was always an element of the Tennessee contest as Ford seeks to become the first black man elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction. The issue slammed into the public consciousness this week with the latest ad.
"I've not met any observer who didn't immediately say, 'Oh my gosh!' It was a race card," said Vanderbilt University professor John Geer, an expert on political attack ads.Watch RNC political ad attacking Harold Ford Jr.
The goal of the ad is to persuade people who don't like Ford — and who might have been thinking about sitting at home this election — to vote, reports CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger.
The RNC has taken the ad off the air after a five-day run. However it was still appearing on at least one TV station in Chattanooga — WRCB-TV — as of Wednesday. The station was still airing the ad because it did not want to run the GOP's replacement commercial. The new ad says Ford "voted to recognize gay marriage" and "wants to give the abortion pill to our schoolchildren," reports the Nashville Tennessean.
Hilary Shelton, director of Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the ad plays off fears some people still have about interracial couples.
"In a Southern state like Tennessee, some stereotypes still exist," he said. "There's very clearly some racial subtext in an ad like that."
The RNC, which paid for the ad, denied that it had any racial subtext. Party chairman Ken Mehlman said it was produced by an independent organization, in accordance with campaign finance law, "without the knowledge, the participation, the advice, the approval or the involvement of either the national party or the campaign."
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Watch RNC political ad attacking Harold Ford Jr.



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See all 178 CommentsYou know thats not true. Its pathetic you've stooped to defending a racist ad, just because it works in favor of the Republicans.
Can't win on a candidate's past record, future ideas, apparent abilities? Haul out the smear campaign, works for the Republicans every time.
Come on! Have you no decency?
There are also printed ads where Ford has been made to appear much darker than he really is. Then there's Bob Jones University appearahces, threateneing hispanic voters with arrest if papers aren't in order, special lines at air ports for "Arab looking" passangers,Willie Horton, and timely "slips of the tongue" that always seem to happen (mostly in the South) around election time: Makaka, tarbaby,et al. It is deliberate and your party's history of playing on racist emotion has worn very thin on the average American voter.
Had enough? Vote for change.
It just proves once again that in the hour of desperation for votes no matter who is in the way
whether they are white, red black or brown, everyone's a target at someone else's expense.
Shame on the GOP! What a sad day we live in.
Signed
A Former Republican as of this year.
It just proves once again that in the hour of desperation for votes no matter who is in the way
whether they are white, red black or brown, everyone's a target at someone else's expense.
Shame on the GOP! What a sad day we live in.
Signed
A Former Republican as of this year.
It just proves once again that in the hour of desperation for votes no matter who is in the way
whether they are white, red black or brown, everyone's a target at someone else's expense.
Shame on the GOP! What a sad day we live in.
Signed
A Former Republican as of this year.
If the ever-deceptive white supremacists can make UNPROVOKED war on Iraq that killed over a half a million children, women, old people, etc, then playing the race card to their racist constituencies is only par for the course.
Glutton for power is the ONLY thing that drives the super power-drunk and wild bush people. And they don't care if the nation is drawn through the mud as long as they are the ones in power.
Hell, throw them all out and we'll just phone it all in.
Leave it to the Karl Rove brigade to stoop to something like race-baiting in a tight Southern race. Remember, the GOP is the party of the Willie Horton ads, which ran on the same theme of fears and hate. Do GOP pols and boosters wonder why they smell of corruption?
Just how credulous (stupid) does the RNC believe Amerians are? Is it plausible for the RNC to pay for an ad "without the knowledge, the participation, the advice, the approval or the involvement of either the national party or the campaign"?
The GOP actively opposed most positive improvements in the South over the last 50 years, opposing desegregation, courting Jim Crow regimes and spawning the likes of Strom Thurmond and his ilk. The GOP and Bush played the race card as late as 2004 against Sen. McCain when he campaigned in SC, claiming his dark-skinned, adopted Asian daughter was black.
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Your statement is as preposterous as the GOP ad, itself, considering the GOP this year continues front runner in filth and corruption, fear and hatred.
The GOP admits spending millions on this campaign's arsenal of attack ads, and according to party insiders it is a trainload of garbage that stop at nothing, not even race-baiting. Since the GOP admits proudly to this tactic, QED baby! Now, let's hear your evidence for the claim the Dems are also contributing race-baiting ads this campaign.
He said tracker.
Winstrv,
Actually, no... It was a flyer in Missouri that did not in fact state that "churches would burn," but rather that, that was how "they used to keep blacks from voting." The fact that the flyer used the words "used to..." seems to infer that it is no longer what "they" do. nevertheless, that is a good example of the kind of misrepresentation of truth the right has to resort to in order to justify the kind of carp that they're pulling on Ford.
While some here obviously don't see a difference between exploiting racism and exploiting fear of racism, I personally think that while neither is acceptable, the former is much worse.
Fartknocker,
Got a link or anything else to back up that claim?
It is a sure sign of a loser when they cant win on the issues and have to resort to personal (and in this case racist) attacks.
I know that you are distoring the truth again but for the sake of argument, I think anyone who would run an ad like this is correctly characterized as a "cracker."
such a big deal about this - playing right into the GOP's lap. The Republicans are just playing the democrat hysteria card - which is working by the way.
Sorry Cathleen, I think this one will back fire on your good ole boys of the GOP.
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