ATLANTA — In the middle of a tight race for Booble Girl of the Year, Vicky Vette has responded to Tera Patrick's announcement that she will donate the $5,000 prize to women's-health charity B.A.B.E. (Breast Awareness Benefits Everyone) if she wins with a 1,300-word press release.

At present, Patrick and Vette have more than 15,000 votes each in the competition. None of the other contenders has more than 2,600 votes.

"It insulted me and hurt my feelings that somebody would use a charity to help themselves instead of using their own fame and notoriety to help the charity. It seemed like it was backwards," Vette told XBIZ. "I've done charity work for years. In 2004 I started doing the AIDS Walk in Atlanta and encouraging my friends and members to donate money, and I sent out free movies and 8 x 10s to members who donated. I'm doing it again this year.

"When someone just pulls that out of a hat at the last minute when there's two or three days to go in a competition, it really gets me upset."

Patrick did appear at the B.A.B.E. Babes and Aces Charity Celebrity Poker Tournament in Los Angeles in June 2007.

In the statement, Vette says that she has gotten her votes one by one, through instant messaging and one-on-one contact with fans.

"While the porn world was sleeping I was imming, texting, messaging, and bulletining my fans all over the world, one by one, vote by vote," Vette said in the release. "Those are the people who are voting, those are the very people who buy the DVD's that you have been ignoring, those are the people going to the free sites you despise, and the people who are now going in droves to download rather than hang out at the local DVD store."

Vette's complete statement can be read at Vote4Vette.com.

The Booble Girl of the Year contest ends Sept. 1.