MEMPHIS — After a racially charged Democratic primary campaign that turned particularly ugly in its final days, voters cast ballots Thursday between a Jewish incumbent congressman and a black opponent who ran a television ad juxtaposing photos of him and a hooded Ku Klux Klan member.

Returns were coming in slowly from the Memphis district and trends weren’t yet emerging more than an hour and a half after the polls closed.

The GOP primary in the 1st District and the Democratic primary in Memphis were expected to be the tightest races for the state’s U.S. House incumbents.

In the 1st District, freshman Rep. David Davis and challenger Phil Roe were running close. With 53 percent of precincts reporting in the northeast Tennessee district, Roe was leading with 19,150 votes, or 51 percent, to Davis’ 17,988 votes, or 48 percent.

Cohen is the first white congressman to represent the majority black Memphis district in more than three decades, and the race has been at the heart of the primary campaign.

Low turnout was predicted for the Memphis primary, which will likely decide the next congressman in the heavily Democratic district that has returned incumbents to the House since 1974. The district is 60 percent black and 35 percent white, and Cohen won his first term after a 2006 primary in which a dozen black candidates, including Tinker, split the vote.

Tinker said her ad linking Cohen to the KKK for opposing a 2005 effort to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a downtown park “merely states the facts. I think the nation needs to know Steve Cohen’s complete record.”

The ad, which ran in the campaign’s final days, drew condemnation Thursday from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. It juxtaposed pictures of a statue of Forrest, the founder of the KKK, and a hooded Klansman in front of a burning cross while asking, “Who is the real Steve Cohen?”

“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics, and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee,” Obama said in a statement.

Cohen, a former state senator with a long record as a civil rights supporter, led an effort last month to get the U.S. House to issue an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the suffering caused by slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.

The ad was also incongruous because of Cohen’s religion — Jews are another group targeted by the KKK.

John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor, said the KKK ad indicates Tinker knows her campaign is in trouble.

“Steve Cohen has been very conscious that he’s representing a black majority district, and he’s not a member of the KKK,” said Geer, who called such tactics risky. “Voters are not fools, and they can sort this out. They are savvy enough to figure out if the attack is credible or not. I’d be surprised if she wins.”

Another issue has been Cohen’s opposition to a House resolution labeling the killing of Armenians in World War I as genocide. The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the nonbinding resolution last year despite arguments it would anger Turkey, which allows U.S. military shipments headed for Iraq to cross its borders.

During a news conference at Cohen’s home Wednesday to call Tinker’s ad an act of desperation, a cameraman who identified himself as working for an Armenian-American citizens’ group interrupted. Cohen pushed the man, Peter Musurlian of Glendale, Calif., out of his house and called police.

Musurlian said his group supports Tinker because of Cohen’s opposition to the genocide resolution. The district does not have a large Armenian population.

The 1st District campaign had its rough spots, too.

After Davis said he was the victim of campaign lies, Roe responded that he’d “never been called a liar in my life.” In years gone by, he added at a GOP pig roast that “if somebody called you a liar, you’d ask them to step outside.”

Roe, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist, ran a TV ad accusing Davis of selling out to “Big Oil” by accepting money from industry PACs and backing legislation supporting offshore drilling.

Davis, a health care business owner, countered with radio ads denying he “pocketed” oil money, accused Roe of deceptive campaign practices and said “the voters of East Tennessee deserve better.”

Congressional incumbents from Tennessee are rarely voted out of office. Voters in the reliably Republican 1st District haven’t ousted an incumbent congressman since 1930, and heavily Democratic Memphis has consistently returned incumbents to the U.S. House since 1974.

Statewide, the last time an incumbent was defeated in a party primary was 1966 when Democrat Tom Murray lost to Ray Blanton in what was then the 7th District. Blanton won the general election and went on to become governor in 1974.

In the 7th District, Republican incumbent Marsha Blackburn took a large early lead over challenger Tom Leatherwood. With 26 percent of precincts reporting, Blackburn had 12,470 votes, or 67 percent, to Leatherwood’s 6,169 or 33 percent.

Democrat Lincoln Davis in the 4th District and Republican Zach Wamp in the 3rd District each defeated token opposition.

Four Tennessee incumbents faced no primary opposition — Republican John Duncan of the 2nd District, and Democrats Jim Cooper of the 5th, Bart Gordon of the 6th and John Tanner of the 8th.

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