The claim:
“(Bill) Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together.” — John McCain in a Web ad
The facts:
A 90-second Web ad features sinister music, side-by-side photographs of Barack Obama and Ayers, and a series of dubious allegations. Now a college professor, Ayers was a founding member of the militant Vietnam-era anti-war group the Weathermen. The foundation referred to is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
Obama served on the foundation’s volunteer board from its inception in 1995 through its dissolution in 2001 and was chairman for four years. So an argument can be made that he ran it, though executive director Ken Rolling handled day-to-day operations. Ayers was active in getting the foundation started but was never on the board, Rolling said.
Walter Annenberg was a lifelong Republican and former ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Nixon. His widow, Leonore, has endorsed McCain. There is much evidence that group was a rather vanilla charity. For example, under the deal with Annenberg, every dollar from him had to be matched by two from elsewhere. The co-funders were a host of respected, mainstream institutions, such as the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Chicago Public Schools. In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals.
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