Giuliani hires controversial image firm

Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has a new team of media consultants with a strong record of electing GOP candidates, sometimes using controversial ads.

The team is led by Heath Thompson and his Dallas-based firm, Scott Howell & Company. Thompson, as director of President Bush's 2000 campaign in South Carolina, helped Bush to an 11-point victory in that state.

Last year, a commercial made by Thompson's firm for Tennessee's U.S. Senate race was criticized for what the NAACP and others said were racial overtones.

Run by the Republican National Committee against Democrat Harold Ford, who is black, the ad showed a white woman saying she had met Ford at a Playboy-sponsored party. As the ad ended, the woman, her shoulders bared, whispered into the camera, "Harold, call me." AP