How ugly is it?

Two weeks out from the election, a lot of campaigns are living down to my long-standing expectations of extreme nastiness. A couple of recent standouts:

*From the Associated Press:

Thomas Rankin, the Libertarian running for Wyoming's lone U.S. House seat, said Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., threatened to slap him after a televised debate.

During a debate Sunday that also included Democrat Gary Trauner, Cubin and Rankin had a testy exchange over campaign contributions Cubin received from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair, said Monday night in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that the confrontation occurred immediately after the debate.

"My aide and I were packing up to leave the debate, and Barbara walked over to me and said, 'If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face.' That's quote-unquote," Rankin said.

*From the LA Times:

A new Republican Party television 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 E. Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race, hoping to become the first African American senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.

Talking Points Memo has an update:

RNC chair Ken Mehlman: ""I don't have the authority to take it down or put it up. It's called an independent expenditure."

Ad copy: The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertisement. Paid for by the Republican National Committee. . ."

*And last but not least, the phone sex ad:

The negative campaigning in the 24th District congressional race took a new turn Friday when at least four area television stations declined to run a commercial by the National Republican Congressional Committee against Democratic candidate Michael Arcuri.

State Sen. Raymond Meier, R-Western, who's running against Arcuri, criticized the ad and requested it be pulled.

The ad, which WUTR, WKTV and Syracuse stations WSTM and WSTQ refused to run Friday, asserts that Arcuri, the Oneida County district attorney, called a telephone sex hot line while staying in a hotel at county expense.

No one is disputing that a telephone call was placed from Arcuri's hotel room two years ago to 800-457-8462, a number that today is a sex line. But the significance of that call — which documents show lasted one minute or less — was hotly contested Friday.

•Arcuri provided records showing that a number with the same last seven digits, but a 518 area code, was made one minute after the 800 number was called. That 518-457-8462 number goes to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Sean Byrne, executive director of the New York Prosecutor Training Institute, said Friday he had misdialed the 800 number from Arcuri's hotel room.