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National Republicans canceled local television advertisement reservations Thursday — slots that would have been used to back 8th Congressional District candidate Randy Graf through the Nov. 7 election.

While Democrats trumpeted the news as a signal the Republicans were declaring the district lost, the National Republican Congressional Committee maintained that it remains fully behind Graf.

It would not, however, comment on the cancellations, which are a matter of public information. While some local ads will remain on the air through Oct. 3, it appears that spots after that were canceled by the party.

What the action means for future party backing for Graf is unclear.

In an e-mail, Jonathan Collegio, press secretary for the NRCC, said, "What the NRCC may do beyond Oct. 3 is a matter of campaign strategy, and we do not publicly discuss that type of strategy — in (District 8) or any congressional district."

Graf is running against Democrat Gabrielle Giffords in a race that has held national significance since Rep. Jim Kolbe announced last November that he would not run for re-election.

Local and national Republicans spent the past week explaining that the party is united behind Graf after a messy primary race that left Graf without Kolbe's endorsement.

Graf's campaign manager, R.T. Gregg, said he didn't know anything about the cancella- tions since, by law, candidates can't know what expenditures the party makes on their behalf. But he said he did not view any changes in party strategy as a blow to the campaign, and said local fundraising is going well.

Democrats addressed a letter to Republicans on Thursday calling on them to withdraw their support for Graf after the Democrats found a link on white nationalist David Duke's Web site to the Graf campaign Web site. The Graf campaign has denounced Duke. No ties or connections between Graf and Duke have been found to exist, other than the Internet link.

It's not clear whether the Republicans were responding to the Democrats' challenge when they canceled the ad buys, however, since the Republicans claim the letter was sent to the media, not to them.

In a letter back to the Demo-crats, Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said: "The Internet is an endless frontier of communication, and we both understand the ability that any entity has to instantly spread information across the world of their own volition, so the fact that you would interpret a Web link as an endorsement of a candidate is laughable at best."

Reynolds accused Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, of being hypocritical, outlining the committee's "shameful record on ethics." He said a candidate the Democrats had tried to recruit in Pennsylvania "used the n-word with regards to his employees, a controversy that led to a local chapter of the NAACP calling for his removal from office."

Giffords and Graf will face Libertarian David Nolan and independent Jay Quick in the general election.