NPR has a pretty sane run-down of the "scandal", including mentions that Annenberg himself (funder of Ayers' "
omg so radical!" board) was a Republican and quotes from Republicans previously in the state legislature essentially laughing off the claims that Ayers is some feared power-monger in Chicago politics.
Not that they'd know more about Chicago politics than Gbaji, of course.
NPR wrote:
Walter Annenberg, a lifelong Republican and former ambassador who was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Reagan, funded an ambitious program to reform urban education in many cities in the mid 1990s. Ayers was an important member of the group that developed and wrote the grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.
[...]
Later in 1995, Ayers hosted a "getting to know you" gathering at his house as Obama was preparing for his first campaign, a run for the Illinois Senate. The incumbent state senator, Alice Palmer, had announced she would run for Congress.
To help Obama in the Democratic primary race to succeed her, Palmer organized a few informal meetings to introduce Obama to her supporters in the fall of 1995, including the gathering at Ayers' house. It was not a fundraiser, as some reports have stated. And it was not the meeting that launched Obama's political career, as other Obama critics have alleged.
[...]
"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."
Nelson says her fellow Republicans "might snort when they hear the name Bill Ayers, because they know he comes from a wealthy family, they know he became a radical activist early in his life ... but beyond just snorting, I don't think anyone gives it another thought."
