"Personal appeal" plastered across an entire race is not personal appeal. Attaching something like "homophobia" to an entire race is the literal definition of racism.
Is racism a bad political strategy? Seems to have worked a lot, historically.
I didn't remark on whether or not it's a bad strategy. Racism has its place in politics because there are qualities, both physical and mental, that loosely vary based entirely on race. To say otherwise is to lie and we all know lying has no place in politics. Now, the real political discussion should be why those variations exist, rather than trying to claim that they do not.
In any case, what Roundy said was racist, but there's nothing objectively wrong with being racist. Many traditionally racist ideas are, for good or ill, based on pattern recognition. Identifying patterns and thinking critically about them is a hallmark of intelligence, but unfortunately lots of people accomplish the former and do none of the latter.