Bill Ayers election controversy

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The Bill Ayers election controversy is the public discussion concerning the propriety and nature of presidential candidate Barack Obama's relations with Bill Ayers, a former leader in the radical Weather Underground organization. The matter was covered by news organizations and brought up by competing candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in a debate during the US 2008 Presidential election. Republican presidential candidate John McCain also criticized[1] Obama for the connection.

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[edit] Interactions between Obama and Ayers

Obama was introduced to Ayers and Ayer's wife, Bernardine Dohrn in 1995 at a "meet-and-greet" political meeting the couple held for Obama at their home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where all three lived.[2] State Senator Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor at the meeting of her past supporters at Ayer's house. "When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of [...] Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn," Chicago blogger Maria Warren wrote in a 2005 blog post. "They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." Warren later wrote that she was concerned Republicans would use her comment for "left-baiting" to hurt Obama.[3]

The two served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation established in 1941. Obama had joined the nine-member board in 1993, and had attended a dozen of the quarterly meetings together with Ayers in the three years up to 2002, when Obama left his position on the board,[4] which Ayers chaired for two years.[5] Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, said the small board had a collegial "friendly but businesslike" atmosphere, and met four times a year for a half-day, mostly to approve grants.[6] The two also appeared together on a 1997 University of Chicago panel discussion on juvenile justice. They again appeared in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library. [4]

Ayers, who had been one of the five-member central committee of the Weathermen in the late 1960s and early 1970s,[7] donated $200 to Obama's 2001 state senate campaign.[8]

Ayers and Dohrn are fixtures of their Chicago neighborhood, "embraced, by and large, in the liberal circles dominating Hyde Park politics", according to Ben Smith, a reporter for The Politico website.[3] But they have not been embraced everywhere. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, alumni at the at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers is a tenured professor of education, and at Northwestern University, where Dohrn is a law professor, protested their presence and said the couple were unrepentant. "This is a community that has regularly elected former Black Panther Bobby Rush (D) to Congress and mostly sees Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as the onetime heart of an established African American church with thousands of members," according to an article in The Washington Post. [9]

[edit] Rise of the controversy

Little attention to Obama's association with Ayers was given in news organizations until February, 2008,[10] when a couple of reports were published in the British press. Howard Kurtz later wrote that the connection between the two Chicagoans was "all but ignored by the news media, other than Fox" until it was raised in a presidential debate.[11]

Obama's rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also brought up Ayers. In a February 15, 2008 article, a Bloomberg L.P. reporter quoted Clinton, who stated that the Republican Party might use the supposed connection with Ayers to discredit Obama if he were chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party.[12]

At the Democratic Party primary debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008, moderator George Stephanopoulos questioned Obama about his association with Ayers, asking the candidate: "Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"[5] Obama questioned how Ayers's past was relevant to his candidacy: "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense."[6] Obama's response led to an exchange between him and Clinton, in which Clinton said, "Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Fund, which was a paid directorship position." [5] Obama then referred to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg.[13] The two were convicted for their actions after they had left the Weather Underground for the splinter group May 19 Communist Organization. The following Sunday, Stephanopoulos asked Republican presidential candidate John McCain, about Obama's patriotism, and McCain responded: "I'm sure he's very patriotic", then added, "But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question."[5]

[edit] Reaction to the controversy

After the controversy arose Ayers was defended by officials and others in Chicago. Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago issued a statement in support of Bill Ayers the next day (April 17), as did the Chicago Tribune in an editorial.[14][15] Ayers remains on the Board of Directors of the Woods Foundation, along with representatives from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and UBS AG Investment Bank.[16] Washington said it was "ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about the two men serving on the foundation board. "Bill Ayers is very respected and prominent in Chicago as a civic activist," she said. "He has a national reputation as an educator. That's why he's on our board."[4]

Liberal pundit Michael Kinsley, a longtime critic of Ayers,[17] argued in Time that it was "absurd" to make a campaign issue out of Obama's relationship with Ayers: "If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others—including Republicans and conservatives—who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues."[18]

Noam Scheiber, writing on the Stump blog of The New Republic, a magazine supporting Obama's candidacy, wrote, "Given that there’s no trace of support for terrorism or political violence anywhere in Obama's record — to the contrary, Obama condemned Ayers' and Dohrns' past through a spokesman — I just don't see how this tells us anything useful about Obama."[19]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cooper, Michael, "Republicans Focus on Obama as Fall Opponent", article, The New York Times, May 8, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
  2. ^ Becker, Jo and Drew, Christopher, "The Long Run: Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side", article, The New York Times, May 11, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
  3. ^ a b Ben Smith. "Obama once visited '60s radicals", politico.com, February 22, 2008. 
  4. ^ a b c Drogin, Bob and Morain, Dan, "Obama and the former radicals: Evidence linking him to the ex-leaders of the Weather Underground is thin. But a YouTube video is making noise.", article, The Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2008, retreived June 5, 2008
  5. ^ a b c d Berman, Ari, "Obama under the weather", The Nation, May 1, 2008
  6. ^ a b Slevin, Peter, "Former '60s Radical Is Now Considered Mainstream in Chicago", article, The Washington Post, April 18, 2008; p A04, retreived June 6, 2008
  7. ^ Montgomery, Paul L., "Last of Radical Leaders Eluded Police 11 Years", article, The New York Times, October 25, 1981, retrieved June 8, 2008
  8. ^ "Fact check: Obama and former radical", Associated Press, April 17, 2008. 
  9. ^ Slevin, Peter, "Former '60s Radical Is Now Considered Mainstream in Chicago", article, The Washington Post, April 18, 2008; p A04, retreived June 6, 2008
  10. ^ Michael Dobbs, Obama's 'Weatherman' ConnectionThe Fact Checker, The Washington Post
  11. ^ Kurtz, Howard, "The Military-Media Complex", The Washington Post, April 21, 2008, retrieved June 6, 2008
  12. ^ Timothy J. Burger. "Obama's Ties Might Fuel `Republican Attack Machine'", bloomberg.com, February 15, 2008. 
  13. ^ An Almost Oppo Free Zone, The Hotline: On Call, National Journal Group, April 16, 2008
  14. ^ Mike Dorning and Rick Pearson, Daley: Don't tar Obama for Ayers The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
  15. ^ Chicago Tribune editorial board, Guilt by association The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
  16. ^ Board of Directors and Officers Woods Foundation
  17. ^ Smith, Ben (2008-05-30). Kinsley on Ayers. Ben Smith's Blog. Politico. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.
  18. ^ Kinsley, Michael. "Rejecting Obama's Radical Friends", Time, 2008-05-29. Retrieved on 2008-06-01. 
  19. ^ Scheiber, Noam, "Parsing the Ayers Allegation", blog post, The Stump blog at The New Republic website, February 22, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008

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