The television ad also employs a misleading technique that both Democrat Street and Republican Katz have used: suggesting that media such as The Inquirer are endorsing a point of view when they are merely reporting it.

Take the example in the latest Street ad. "Candidate Katz," intones the voice-over, "is pushing a tax scheme that threatens city services." The Inquirer of Oct. 5 is cited as the source, and the obvious implication is that The Inquirer has said some such thing in an editorial or analysis.

In fact, the story quotes Mayor Rendell, U.S. Rep. Bob Borski and City Controller Jonathan A. Saidel - all partisan Democratic Street supporters - as saying that city services would deteriorate under Katz's proposal to cut wage taxes to 4 percent. But to cite The Inquirer, as though it concurred with that position, is simply not true.

The Daily News is similarly cited when the voice-over says that Katz is pushing to sell the Philadelphia Gas Works, "which the Daily News reported would raise rates on senior citizens and the poor."

Two stories are mentioned, one on Oct. 20, 1998, and one on Dec. 7, 1998. Neither support the ad's implication that Katz was alone in thinking about selling the badly managed, scandal-plagued gas company.

On Oct. 20, Daily News columnist W. Russell G. Byers polled the candidates about selling PGW. "Now is long past the time for selling the gas works," said Katz. "PGW has been a cesspool of cronyism, patronage and corporate welfare at great cost to both its residential and corporate ratepayers."

But Street also expressed interest in the possibility of selling the city-owned utility. "This is a good time to find out if there is a market for PGW," he said. "We need to figure out what's in the best interests of the ratepayers."

Katz's press secretary, Bob Barnett, said the candidate believes several options should be considered for PGW - ranging from selling it to running it with a talented management team.

The article on Dec. 7 said that aides to Mayor Rendell had advocated selling the gas company and that the mayor had commissioned a $400,000 study into the ramifications.

The story did quote Ben Hayllar, PGW's president, as saying that any sale would probably mean the end of a 20 percent discount program for the elderly and a program that subsidized the poor.

The new television ad, though, is built around an obscure proposal to build a country club for automobile enthusiasts in Berks County.

Essentially, Dick Muller, the man behind the project, wants to create a private facility where well-heeled owners of high-performance cars would have their own 3.2-mile track on which they could drive as fast as they wanted.

Katz, as an expert in arranging financing for public projects, was enlisted to do just that for the track. Muller said in an an interview yesterday that he needs $45 million to complete the project.

In June, House Majority Leader John Perzel, a Philadelphia Republican, inserted $20 million for the project in the state capital budget. The capital budget is really a long-range wish list, and very few of the wishes ever get fulfilled.

"As a businessman, Katz lobbied on behalf of wealthy investors for millions of our tax dollars to fund an auto race track," says the ad's voice-over in a tone of disbelief as Formula One cars zoom around a track. "At the same time, candidate Katz is pushing a tax scheme that threatens city services."

Muller said yesterday that he is seeking a loan, not a grant, and that Katz has not actively participated in the project since last October.

"He notified me that he was going to expend his energies running for mayor," said Muller, who is now using a New York firm to raise money.

Why include such a project so obscure to most Philadelphians in an ad?

"Here's a guy saying we need to be parsimonious in government and he's busy slipping into the budget $20 million for a race track and country club," said David Axelrod, who does Street's advertising.

Replied Barnett: "Sam was raising money for projects. Nothing happened with the track and there is no expectation of it."

The radio ad, playing on stations that appeal primarily to black listeners, says, "There's an election coming and the Republicans are counting on us . . . They are counting on us to stay home so they can elect their man, Sam Katz. . . . That's their plan to defeat a great Democratic leader from our community who has spent a lifetime fighting for people in neighborhoods. . . ."

Is that inserting race into a campaign where it has largely been absent?

Not really, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political advertising.

"This is a standard 'get out the vote' ad," she said. "Each side is trying to mobilize its constituency."