Taking advantage of his newfound campaign momentum, top-tier Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain blasted his closest rival Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a pair of Sunday talk show appearances over a racist sign painted on a rock outside a West Texas property used by the governor’s family, the Houston Chronicle reports.

“The name of the place was called N*****head,” Cain said on ABC’s This Week. “That is very insensitive.”

“Since Gov. Perry has been going there for years to hunt, I think that it shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking the word off of that rock and renaming the place,” Cain continued.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Cain said there “isn’t a more vile, negative word than the N-word, and for him to leave it there as long as he did, until before, I hear, they finally painted over it, is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country.”

According to a Washington Post report, Perry stated that his family had the racist word painted over when it learned of its existence “in 1983 or 1984.”

“Mr. Cain is wrong about the Perry family’s quick action to eliminate the word on the rock, but is right the word written by others long ago is insensitive and offensive. That is why the Perrys took quick action to cover and obscure it,” said Perry communications director Ray Sullivan in a statement.

The hunting camp flap is Cain’s latest attack on the Texas governor as the race has tightened between the two GOP contenders. Cain rocketed to the top of the field after last month’s commanding Florida straw poll victory followed by a Fox News Poll showing the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and Tea Party favorite in a statistical tie with Perry behind frontrunner and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Further proof of Cain’s momentum is an important Tea Party straw poll win in Chicago over the weekend. The Associated Press reports that Cain walked away with 77 percent of votes from TeaCon11 participants on Saturday held in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann came in second and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was third.