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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Harold Ford Jr.'s Senate campaign says that having a former state Democratic Party official speak in favor of the Democratic candidate in a new television ad is not akin to Republican opponent Bob Corker's use of nonresidents to praise his job as mayor in Chattanooga.
The ad released Tuesday, which also features Gov. Phil Bredesen and Ford's pastor, begins with comments from a woman identified as Dixie Taylor Huff.
"I was asked a few weeks ago: 'What in the world is a country girl like you doing for Harold Ford Jr.?'" Huff says in the ad. "I said: 'We need change.'"
What the ad does not indicate is that Huff was the treasurer of the state Democratic Party until last year.
Michael Powell, Ford's top campaign adviser, said there is nothing disingenuous about Huff's role in the ad.
"There are a lot of people in rural Tennessee who are supporting Harold Ford for the Senate, and that's the point of her being in the ad," Powell said.
Powell said there is no parallel to the Corker ad in which some of the people praising the job he did as mayor of Chattanooga in TV ads actually lived in surrounding municipalities.
"There is no effort here to misrepresent anything in this ad," Powell said. "That's what Corker did in his ad."
The Corker campaign has explained that all the speakers in the ad were from the metropolitan Chattanooga area, and are involved in the civic life there.
Corker's spokesman Todd Womack declined to comment on the latest Ford ad other than to say in an e-mail: "I think we all know why that 'country girl' is supporting U.S. Rep. Ford."
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