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NASHVILLE -- Democrat Harold Ford Jr. launched a TV ad Thursday defending himself against two now-famous GOP attack ads that linked him to a party girl, gay marriage and abortion pills for schoolchildren. His Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Bob Corker, also launched a new ad saying Ford has missed 365 votes as Memphis' congressman. The Ford ad includes a Nashville mother of two sons who have served in Iraq -- and a Chattanooga Episcopal priest. The mother, Maura Satchell, says in the ad, "My son's life is on the line in Iraq, and they are putting out...

Wal-Mart’s first company-wide voter registration drive has become entangled in national politics as a union group and the Rev. Jesse Jackson demand that the retailer fire a Republican consultant connected to a U.S. Senate campaign television ad that critics call racist. Veteran Republican strategist Terry Nelson is the head of an outside group that created the Tennessee ad for the Republican National Committee against Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Harold Ford Jr. Nelson is also one of two political consultants —— the other is a Democrat — that Wal-Mart hired last month to help get voter registration information to its more...

For Harold Ford Sr., this campaign season has been a family affair. He's worked to drum up votes for his son Jake's bid as an independent to represent the 9th Congressional District. Ford Sr. is also a volunteer in his oldest son Harold Jr.'s Democratic U.S. Senate campaign and has offered advice on voter turnout and campaign tactics. "He (Sr.) knows the last three months of strategy better than anyone, and he (Jr.) trusts his father," said Ford Jr.'s campaign adviser, Robert Sepucha. During several local events for Ford Jr., the elder Ford plugged Jake's candidacy, said Shelby County Democratic...

Many Tennesseans--including Republicans--miss the part about how Mr. Ford's faith is also his justification for more liberal economic positions in the name of "social justice." Also lending credibility is the fact--endlessly trumpeted--that he has taken these conservative positions despite flack from his party, and despite representing the most liberal district in Tennessee, urban Memphis. On trickier issues, Mr. Ford has perfected the art of Third Way-ism, presenting himself as an "independent" thinker on issues such as the Iraq war. He knows many Republicans are uncomfortable with the current situation, but that they also won't get behind a cut-and-run Democrat. He's...

A white woman with blonde hair and bare shoulders looks into the camera and whispers, "Harold, call me," and then winks. This Republican National Committee television ad doesn't mention that "Harold" — Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. — 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. 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...

WASHINGTON — Republican Bob Corker wants to wait until the last minute to loan more of his personal fortune to his Senate campaign and thus delay Harold Ford Jr.’s right to raise more from individual donors, according to a letter from Corker’s campaign chairman and accusations from Ford surrogates. The Ford campaign, saying Corker is "playing games" with campaign finance laws in an attempt to buy the election, circulated a letter Wednesday from Corker campaign chairman Jimmy Haslam that asks potential donors to pony up by this Thursday afternoon. Corker communications director confirmed the letter’s legitimacy. "The target is to...

The Republican National Committee has pulled from the airways a controversial ad demeaning Senate Democratic nominee Harold Ford Jr. The RNC apparently intends to replace the ad. The Senate Republican nominee Bob Corker had asked that the ad be taken down, calling it "tacky." "We felt like it was tasteless and didn't reflect the kind of campaign we were running," said Corker spokesman Todd Womack. The ad, called "Who hasn't," began running Friday. In the ad, a man in sunglasses says of Ford, "So he took money from porn movie producers. Who hasn't?" The ad continues with a bare-shouldered blond...

Yeah Junior, we knew that you were at that Playboy party.

NASHVILLE - While Bob Corker has urged that one Republican National Committee TV ad be taken off the air, Harold Ford Jr. on Tuesday called on Tennessee stations to stop broadcasting another. Federal Election Commission figures indicate the RNC is spending about $1.5 million on the two ads. A total of almost $8 million in such "independent expenditures" have now been reported in the current Tennessee U.S. Senate campaign - apparently, a record amount for Tennessee. Republican Senate nominee Corker says the RNC ad he has criticized is "tacky," while others contend it goes beyond that to improper racial and...

WASHINGTON -- Republicans are calling it the "Memphis meltdown," and running ads saying it shows Harold Ford Jr. has "crossed the line" and become desperate. Democrats say Ford's parking lot confrontation with Bob Corker on Friday energized an electorate that's already in a fighting mood. It's being spun across the country on national broadcasts, along with clips of an ad against Ford paid for by the Republican National Committee that Corker's campaign manager has called "tacky," and has asked to have pulled. In an increasing rancorous campaign, Ford suggested on CNN Sunday that Corker is getting help from an RNC...

NASHVILLE -- Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Harold Ford Jr. are neck-and-neck in the U.S. Senate race two weeks before the election, but Corker may be picking up some momentum from a barrage of Republican advertising, a new Mason-Dixon Tennessee Poll indicates. The new poll, conducted Oct. 18-20, has Corker with 45 percent and Ford with 43 percent -- a dead heat given the poll's margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points. In the last Mason-Dixon Tennessee Poll three weeks ago, Ford led 43 to 42 percent. Since then, the Republican National Committee has shifted campaign cash and resources...

The mudslide in the Smoky Mountains continued all weekend in the Tennessee Senate race, to the point where Representative Harold Ford Jr., the Democrat, bus-stormed a news conference by his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, to complain about advertisements aimed at his family’s political troubles and now at himself. Last Friday the Corker campaign tried to distance itself from a Republican National Committee commercial that juxtaposes women and men talking about Mr. Ford’s good looks with suggestions that he took money from pornographers, was seen at a Playboy function and at the end, has a white blonde asking him to call...

WASHINGTON — Hands in his pockets and a far-away look in his eyes, Harold Ford Jr. stares out from the cover of next week's Newsweek magazine, which calls him the Democrats' best hope for taking the U.S. Senate. The October 30 cover story, "The Path to Power," follows the Memphis Congressman through a day of campaigning that begins at a church service in Chattanooga, and describes the centrist Democrats' effect on various audiences. "Two weeks before the midterm elections," the story says, "the Democrats' fate lies not in the hands of the party's much-dissected antiwar left but with a handful...

CHATTANOOGA — Republican U.S. Senate nominee Bob Corker campaigned Monday with party fundraiser Rudy Giuliani and again said stopping a "tacky" GOP television ad that attacks Democrat Harold Ford Jr. is out of his campaign's control. Corker, speaking at an airport news conference with the former New York mayor and possible 2008 presidential candidate, criticized Ford for failing to vote seven years ago in the U.S. House for a resolution condemning a pardon of Puerto Rican terrorists by then-President Clinton. Ford voted present. Ford spokeswoman Carol Andrews said the campaign would have a comment about the vote later. Meanwhile Monday,...

More than 200 supporters showed up Wednesday for a political rally for Harold Ford Jr. in front of the City County Building in downtown Knoxville. The cheering crowd gathered following an interdenominational prayer breakfast Ford attended with Gov. Phil Bredesen at the Crowne Plaza, which the campaign reported had 600 supporters in attendance. The downtown rally _was held to kick off early voting, which began Wednesday. Ford, a Democratic congressman from Memphis, faces Republican former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker in a showdown for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Former Knoxville mayoral candidate Madeline...

On guns, gays and God, Corker and Ford agree By Richard Locker October 19, 2006 NASHVILLE -- It was a brief moment of levity in the Memphis debate between U.S. Senate candidates Bob Corker and Harold Ford Jr. After Ford charged that his Republican rival would be a "rubber stamp" for President Bush, WREG-TV news analyst Norm Brewer reeled off a list of issues on which the Democratic congressman has also sided with the president, including several social issues. Brewer asked, if Corker's a rubber stamp, then what did that make Ford? "I know one thing: It doesn't describe a...

WASHINGTON -- With Tennessee seen by some as part of a three-state "firewall" the Republican Party must retain to hold the U.S. Senate, records show Bob Corker has outspent Democrat Harold Ford Jr. by $3 million as the money game heats up and early voting begins. President Bush's appearances at Corker fund-raisers in Memphis and Nashville helped the former mayor of Chattanooga out-raise Ford almost two-to-one in the most recent July 15-Sept. 30 reporting period, records show. Together the latest filings show Ford and Corker had spent more than $21 million five weeks before the Nov. 7 election. Advertisement Ford...

Democrat's spending, tax policy criticized; campaign decries 'slander' -- NASHVILLE - A group funded by a Texan who was also the leading financer of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" has become the first independent political organization to enter the TV advertising war in Tennessee's U.S. Senate campaign. The Free Enterprise Fund, a "527" political organization based in Washington, D.C., began airing ads in Middle and West Tennessee on Tuesday that attack Democrat Harold Ford Jr. for "living it up on campaign cash but pushing higher taxes for Tennessee families." The Ford campaign promptly denounced the ad and the organization. A...

NASHVILLE - Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Bob Corker joined Democrat Harold Ford Jr.'s campaign Friday in denouncing as "reprehensible" a radio commercial attacking Ford and sponsored by a group calling itself "Tennesseans for Truth." Corker's campaign learned of the ad being aired on a Gallatin radio station after being contacted by Ford's campaign on Friday, according to Corker spokesman Todd Womack. Michael Powell, senior adviser to the Ford campaign, said the campaign's "research people" who monitor advertising had found the ad and, so far as he knew, it has aired only on the one station, WHIN. Powell said the ad...

CHATTANOOGA - The second debate between Tennessee's main U.S. Senate candidates got off to a contentious start Tuesday, with both men taking shots at each other - personal and political - in a campaign down to its final weeks. Democratic U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., of Memphis, and former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, a Republican, tangled over Iraq, immigration, abortion and each other's records. The Iraq war dominated much of the debate. Ford said a steady hand is needed in Iraq and North Korea, with Tuesday's explosions at a munitions site in Baghdad and Monday's nuclear test by the North...