New GOP ad depicts black Rhodes scholar as a street thug because he once recorded a rap album

Antonio Delgado, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate who is running for Congress as a Democrat in New York's 19th congressional district, is being portrayed as a street thug in a new National Republican Congressional Committee ad that highlights a rap album he recorded more than a decade ago.

Although the GOP has been using Delgado's old rap album -- which he recorded under the name "A.D. the Voice" back in 2006 -- against him for months, the party's latest ad is stepping things up a notch by showing a photo of Delgado in a hoodie to make him look like he's a drug dealer.

The new ad also contrasts the optimistic message that the 41-year-old Delgado is running on with some obscene lyrics that he wrote when he was in his late 20s, before he abandoned his musical ambitions to pursue a career as an attorney.

Included among the "offensive" lyrics used in the ad are Delgado rapping, "God bless Iraq" and "Criticize, it's what a patriot does."

Gerald Benjamin, a longtime political science professor at State University of New York, told the New York Times earlier this year that attacking Delgado with his 12-year-old rap album was smart politics.

"People like us, people in rural New York, we are not people who respond to this part of American culture," he said.

Watch the new GOP ad below.