Black Political Zone

Complaints are arising about ads the Republican National Committee is running in Tennessee against African American Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, doesn't seem to see a problem with the ad. The Houston Chronicle reports:

A new Republican Party TV ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to "call me" is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.

Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race to become the first black senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.

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