Kaine calls ads linking Obama to Ayers ‘slimy’

Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: August 27, 2008

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine went on the offensive Wednesday on behalf of Barack Obama, using words including “slimy” and “bogus” to describe TV ads that have aired in Virginia linking Obama to William Ayers, who has been associated with bombings in the U.S. in the 1970s.

“I continue to be surprised that Senator McCain is squandering his reputation for public service by associating with these kinds of slimy operators,” the Virginia governor said during a conference call from the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The tone of Kaine’s remarks was notable because he will speak at the convention tonight just ahead of Obama’s acceptance speech for the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for president.

While another Virginian, Senate candidate Mark Warner, mentioned McCain only twice during his keynote address to the convention Tuesday night, Kaine cited Obama’s Republican opponent six times in a three-minute criticism of the tactics in the ad that has appeared on TV stations in Richmond, Norfolk and Roanoke.

“This is an advertisement done by groups with close ties to the McCain campaign that has put out clearly bogus

information” that many stations have refused to run because it is untruthful, the governor said.

Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, acknowledges he was a member of the Weather Underground group that claimed responsibility for more than 10 bombings from 1970 through 1974. The bombs’ targets included the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol, and other government buildings. No one was injured by the blasts.

Ayers was a fugitive for 10 years and, after arrest in 1980, avoided prosecution.

In the 1990s, Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, introduced Obama to people in the Chicago neighborhood they shared. Obama and Ayers also were members of a board for a nonprofit educational foundation in Chicago from 1999-2002, and Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s campaign for the Illinois state Senate.

Obama campaign officials linked the TV ads to an organization called the American Issues Project, which they said is funded by Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who is a financial supporter and adviser for McCain. The AIP backed the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Kaine said the ads “are designed to divide Americans against each other.”