Local candidates are concerned that the controversial NC GOP-Obama ad will hurt fundraising and recruitment efforts:

Olga Morgan Wright , an African American Republican who is running against Democratic Rep. Alma Adams , said the ad hurts her already difficult task of getting black voters to consider voting Republican.

“This will be something that people will remember in my community and equate Republicans with everything wrong and racist,” said Morgan Wright…..

Maybe I need to see a psychiatrist, but the ad just doesn’t bother me. In my view, it’s either in-your-face ads or subtle hatchet jobs from willing Democratic allies like McClatchy, who portrays John McCain as a hypocritical SOB during his poverty tour:

It was a breezy, sunny day this week in lush southwest Alabama. McCain was surrounded by friendly African-American ladies serenading him with spirituals as they rode a ferry across the muddy Alabama River.

McCain, sporting his Navy cap and sunglasses, even scampered to the bridge to take a turn at the wheel, news cameras clicking away to record his moment as helmsman.

Perfect image — the maverick Republican wooing a voter group that few in his party bother to court.

Except that McCain, the longtime scourge of congressional “earmark” spending who’s promised to veto every bill with earmarks if he’s elected president, was aboard a ferry that’s financed by a $2 million earmark in a 2005 spending bill.

…..McCain risks muddying his image in the public mind, said Karen Johnson-Cartee, an expert in political communication at the University of Alabama.

“When he goes into a place like Selma and says, `Y’all need this, that and the other,’ to me, he’s created a violation of type,” meaning it goes against the image he’s built over the years, Johnson-Cartee said. “You’re only as good as how solid that public image is. … Trust is all you’ve got, and if you violate that trust, you’re screwed.”

I guess the media has no choice but to deal with McCain is this manner because he doesn’t have a Rev. Jeremiah Wright lingering in the background.