Bill Ayers Presidential Election Controversy
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose regarding Barack Obama's contact with Bill Ayers, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical left organization in the 1970s. Investigations by CNN, The New York Times and other news organizations concluded that Obama did not have a close relationship with Ayers. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a gathering at their home in 1995, where Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor in the Illinois State Senate. Obama and Ayers' nine years of service on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago overlapped three years 1999–2002.
The matter was initially raised by Sean Hannity and other hosts on conservative talk radio programs, and then by moderator George Stephanopoulos during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008. In October 2008, the matter was mentioned in attack ads, robocalls, mass mailings, and campaign speeches by Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as an issue in the general election campaign. Obama has condemned Ayers' past, and stated that he does not have a close association with him.
Read more about Bill Ayers Presidential Election Controversy: Presidential Campaign Issue, Reactions To The Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words bill, presidential, election and/or controversy:
“What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I’ll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request—it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, “Where is the best place to go to?” He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages—heaven for climate, and hell for society.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)