Bill Ayers presidential election controversy

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, controversy was manufactured regarding Barack Obama's relationship 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 for three years from 1999 to 2002.

The matter was first raised by the British and American press, then by conservative blogs and talk radio programs, and then by moderator George Stephanopoulos during a debate between Hillary Clinton and Obama in April 2008. The Obama-Ayers connection was used as a major campaign issue by Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Obama has condemned Ayers' past, and stated that he does not have a close association with him.

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