Critics largely gave Gov. Rick Perry a pass for hunting on a deer lease that once carried a racist name. Even the White House accepted Mr. Perry’s explanation that his family found the word abhorrent and had painted over it at the first opportunity.

But a television advertisement that helped put Mr. Perry over the top in his 1990 race for agriculture commissioner is still making racially tinged waves, two decades after that campaign ended in his first statewide victory.

The Perry presidential campaign declined to release the controversial ad this week, and a search on YouTube and similar sites turns up nothing. But The Texas Tribune found a copy — for review purposes only — at the Political Commercial Archive at the University of Oklahoma.

The 30-second attack ad prominently features Mr. Perry’s Democratic opponent in that race, the incumbent Jim Hightower, posing triumphantly with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Their hands are clasped above their heads, and the two men are smiling.