“Don’t believe those polls telling you that we don’t have a chance,” Rep. Harold Ford Jr. told the hundreds of clapping, cheering supporters who packed Bessie Smith Hall on Sunday night, during his final round of appearances before Tuesday’s election.

Rep. Ford said the latest polls – due to be released Monday by USA Today and Rasmussen Polls – show that he and former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, the Republican nominee, are running neck and neck in their race for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

According to Sunday’s edition of USA Today, “late polls made former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker the mild favorite to defeat Congressman Harold Ford Jr., a Democrat who is seeking to become the first black elected to the Senate from a Southern state in more than a century.”

A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted late last week shows the Tennessee Senate race remains a statistical tie.
The poll gives Corker a 49 to 46 percent lead, but the Corker advantage is within the margin of error for the poll.

Congressman Ford stayed overnight in Chattanooga and was up before 6 a.m. meeting with city sanitation workers.

He also made the rounds of local radio stations later in the morning.

Don’t let false reports that his opponent is way ahead in the polls discourage you from voting, Rep. Ford and a chorus of other speakers told the crowd on Sunday night. If you didn’t vote early, then make sure you get out and vote on Tuesday. And make sure all your friends vote, too.

Tennessee has a chance to make history by electing Rep. Ford to the U.S. Senate, state Rep. Tommie Brown said.

“But it won’t happen because we had a dream,” she said. “It won’t happen because we came here tonight. It will only happen if we get out and vote.”

Ford, who spent Sunday crisscrossing the state, talking to potential supporters, said the U.S. Senate race has been an unnecessarily long, hard, nasty campaign.

There are lots of legitimate issues on which he and Mr. Corker differ significantly, including the war in Iraq, according to Rep. Ford, a long-time critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the war and its determination to “stay the course” with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in command.

“My opponent keeps saying that he will follow the advice of the commanders on the ground,” he said. “Well, the leaders in the Army, the Navy and the Marines are all saying now that it’s time for Rumsfeld to go. And if the Army, the Navy and the Marines aren’t the commanders on the ground, then I don’t know who is.”

But during this fall’s campaign, serious debates have taken a back seat to attack ads aimed at distracting voters from the real issues, he said.

And the worst part is that Bob Corker knows that the charges he’s leveled are not true, Rep. Ford said.

“He knows I’m not for gay marriage,” Rep. Ford said. “He knows I’m not for abortion on demand, or for giving the abortion pill to school children. But he just can’t help himself.

“Even today, 36 hours before the polls are set to open, he’s still got five different ads running,” the Democratic candidate said.

Of the thousands and thousands of people he’s met while campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Rep. Ford said one of his favorites is the young man who came up to him recently and said he’d just seen another ad for Ford’s multi-millionaire opponent – former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker – on TV.

“He says, ‘I did this’ and ‘I did that,’” the exasperated man told Rep. Ford.

“I want to say, ‘Mr. Corker, even Jesus had disciples. And if He had to have help, then I know you couldn’t have done all those things you take credit for all by yourself.’”