Race casts shadow over tight US polls

In a Republican party television ad, Democratic candidate Harold Ford is the object of a bare-shouldered blonde's flirtations who talks of meeting him at "a Playboy party" and later winks, saying "Harold, call me!" in a stage whisper.

The blonde, according to some critics, is a not-so-subtle attempt to prompt a negative reaction toward Ford among voters hostile toward sexual relationships between black men and white women.

"It is unbelievable," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor who has authored a book on political advertising. "I've seen thousands and thousands of ads and never before one that brings up interracial sex."

The ad, sponsored by the Republican National Committee, was pulled last week after it sparked a national backlash, but was just one of several that have more subtle race-related messages in the Tenneessee campaign.

One was a radio commercial aired by Ford's opponent, Bob Corker, that plays the sound of beating tom-toms -- which critics have called "jungle drums" -- while the narrator portrays Ford, who currently serves in the House of Representatives, as a product of Washington.

The music shifts to a symphony orchestra when the narrator hails Corker's Tennessee roots as a businessman and former Chattanooga mayor in an ad titled "DC versus Tennessee."

The campaign between Ford and Corker is one of a handful of contests in the November 7 midterm elections that will decide whether Republicans continue to control the Senate. That and the prospect of an African-American being elected from a state that was part of the Confederacy during the Civil War have added heat to the contest.

The only time that a black has served in the senate from a Southern state was in the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, when senators were chosen by state legislatures, not by popular election.