The director of ACORN in Ohio says neither she nor other employees of the social-justice group have ever offered to help pimps or prostitutes ply their trade in the state.

But the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and would-be clients in poor, black and Latino neighborhoods are paying a price nonetheless, said Amy Teitelman, the group's Ohio leader.

ACORN, which says it has about 7,500 dues-paying members in Ohio and operates offices in Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, has temporarily stopped offering help to clients in the wake of an undercover video shot by self-styled investigators.

From conservative standard bearers such as Glenn Beck to the administration of President Barack Obama, ACORN has been ripped over employees offering advice on ducking federal laws to buy and operate a home as a brothel.

"We obviously don't tolerate anything close to what is portrayed on those videos," Teitelman said. "This just takes away from the work we are doing."

Meanwhile, the U.S. House voted yesterday to deny all federal funds for ACORN. The action comes just three days after the Senate took similar action.

"ACORN has violated serious federal laws, and today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization," said second-ranked House Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia.

The vote was 345-75, with Democrats supplying all the "no" votes.

On Monday, the Senate voted 83-7 to deny housing- and community-grant funding to ACORN.

The Senate and House initiatives to cut funding for ACORN won't take effect until the bills to which they are attached clear Congress and are signed by Obama.

In Ohio, the group will not offer client services for up to a month while getting training and procedures "to make sure we are not vulnerable to the kind of attacks we are seeing," Teitelman said.

"There are obviously people who would like to catch us doing things that look bad or could be perceived as unseemly. We need to be aware people coming into our offices may not be friendly."

ACORN, which has earned conservative scorn over earlier voter-registration efforts, helps low-income people preserve their homes from foreclosure and lobbies on social issues such as health-care reform.

The current controversy has attracted racist, profane and threatening phone calls and e-mails to ACORN's Ohio offices, said Teitelman, of Cincinnati.

"It's the same right-wing machinery that attacked Obama," she said. "ACORN has kind of become the new target for dog-whistle racism. It's sort of a way to be racist without being overtly racist."

ACORN has attracted conservative ire because it typically rallies support for Democrats, including Obama, who as a lawyer represented ACORN in 1995 in a lawsuit that sought enforcement of the "motor voter" law in Illinois.

In Columbus, ACORN has a three-employee office off Mount Vernon Avenue on the Near East Side. On the local group's Web site, it says it has 1,000 families as members in chapters in Franklinton, the South Side, the Hilltop, the Mount Vernon Avenue area and the Main/Miller streets corridor.

Barbara Clark, the head organizer of the Columbus office, said the flap has attracted both scorn and support. "We've had a few nasty e-mails, but we're getting a lot of support from the community," she said.

Some ACORN-paid solicitors turned in some questionable voter-registration applications that were rejected in Franklin County in 2004 and 2006, said Michael Stinziano, director of the Board of Elections.

"Our staff took steps to communicate more with ACORN upfront and we had no problems in 2008 with registrations. In terms of current practice, they are not a concern in Franklin County," he said.

Information from the Associated Press was included in this story.

rludlow@dispatch.com

How Ohioans voted

The U.S. House voted 345-75 yesterday to cut all federal funding for ACORN.

• Democrats

Boccieri, Y; Driehaus, Y; Fudge, N; Kaptur, Y; Kilroy, Y; Kucinich, N; Ryan, Y; Space, Y; Sutton, Y;

Wilson, Y

• Republicans

Austria, Y; Boehner, Y; Jordan, Y; LaTourette, Y; Latta, Y; Schmidt, Y; Tiberi, Y; Turner, Y

Source: Associated Press