April 17, 2008
Foundation 'Under Siege' After Obama-Clinton Debate
The Woods Fund of Chicago has been thrust into the middle of the latest controversy in the heated Democratic primary battle between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
As a result, the staff at the private foundation is now attempting to handle a swarm of attention from journalists, which is centered on a longtime Woods Fund board member and his relationship with Mr. Obama, who had been a member of the Fund’s board from 1998 to 2001.
The controversy stems from an exchange during Wednesday’s nationally televised debate in Philadelphia, where Mr. Obama was questioned about his relationship with William C. Ayers, a Woods Fund board member who had been part of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground used terroristic methods, such as setting bombs, to protest the war. Mr. Ayers had later written that he did not regret setting the bombs.
During Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Obama was questioned about his ties to Mr. Ayers through the Woods Fund — a private foundation with more than $58-million in assets that works to alleviate poverty.
According to the Woods Fund’s filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been a member of the Woods Fund’s board of directors since at least 1998. He has received $6,000 annually for his work on the board.
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, had been a board member from 1998 through 2001.
The foundation’s Form 990-PF tax filings show Mr. Obama received similar $6,000 payments in 1998, 1999, and 2000. He did not receive any compensation in 2001, the tax records show.
George Stephanopoulos, one of the ABC News moderators of the debate, asked Mr. Obama about his relationship with Mr. Ayers.
“An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said. “Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?”
Ms. Clinton then brought up the fact that both men had been members of the Woods Fund board — a connection Mr. Obama said is not relevant to his White House aspirations.
“President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than me serving on a board with somebody for actions that he did 40 years ago,” Mr. Obama said.
The exchange prompted a flood of calls today to the Woods Fund’s office, said a spokeswoman, who explained that the calls were coming at a particularly bad time for the organization.
Its president, Deborah Harrington, is sick and has been unable to reply to the flurry of inquiries.
“We are under siege,” the spokeswoman said.
She said she could not comment on the relationship between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama.
Mr. Ayers, for his part, did not return a phone call left this morning at his office.
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So what? Seems like pointless mudslinging to me. Just because you served on the same board as someone and were “friendly” doesn’t mean you agree with their entire life’s actions. I don’t see the relevance.
— Katie Apr 18, 02:43 PM #
I wonder what the Woods Foundation was doing with either one of these gents on their Board. No wonder they are under siege.
— Geoffrey Apr 18, 03:11 PM #
Are they kidding? I’m paying $3.30 a gallon for gasoline and THIS is the kind of question asked at a PRESIDENTIAL debate? I have people on my board that I don’t like, but in public you better believe nobody can tell. C’mon now…this is just more distraction from the serious issues.
— Tanya Apr 18, 03:18 PM #
What’s with paying members who serve on nonprofit boards?
— Beth Apr 18, 03:21 PM #
see this by Marc Cooper:
During Wednesday night’s Pennsylvania debate, George Stephanopoulos didn’t flinch from trying to smear Barack Obama by association with former 60’s radical Bill Ayers. Too bad George didn’t ask Hillary about her own summer spent working for a law firm run by Communists.
The facts: Obama met with former Weather Underground radical Ayers and his wife, former 60’s SDS leader Bernardine Dohrn, at a 1995 Chicago meeting. From 1999-2002, Obama served on the board of a charity organization with Ayers that gave out a couple of grants. Now, I knew these Weathermen folks back in the 60’s, and they were quite unsavory then. There were plenty of us who were in SDS at that time who thought the Weathermen were despicable. And, frankly, I have no particular affection for them now. I found Ayers’ memoir, published in 2001, to be execrable.
But by the time Obama met them in the 90’s, they had cleared their violent past with the criminal justice system, they had served their punishment, gone back to school and by then become legitimate and even respected educators, and players in Chicago liberal politics.
When Ayers and Dohrn were running amuck advocating violent revolution, Obama was literally eight years old.
Compare and contrast those facts with Hillary’s own association with 60’s radicals. In the summer of 1969, when Hillary was just entering Yale Law School, she went to work for the foremost radical law firm in, yes, Berkeley. Carl Bernstein recounts the episode in his Hillary biography of last year titled “A Woman in Charge.”
This is what Bernstein told interviewer Jon Wiener last summer:
“That summer she went to work at the most important radical law firm in America at that point: Treuhaft, Walker and Bernstein in Oakland. They defended the Panthers. Two of their partners were members of the Communist Party—including Bob Treuhaft, who was married to Jessica Mitford. I talked to Bob Treuhaft not long before he died, and he said he was certain that Hillary came there because she subscribed to some of the kind of law they practiced and the kind of clients they defended. In her so-called autobiography, “Living History,” she put in a couple of sentences about living in Berkeley with Bill that summer and working at that law firm, but she makes it sound like their work focused on postal rate increases. There’s not a word about radicals.”
Very little has been written about this episode. One piece, in a conservative paper, goes into great detail speculating on what cases the young Hillary Clinton might have been working.
I have no desire to flesh out any of this information as my position is simple. Every one deserves the best legal defense possible, and I have no problem with Hillary having worked for a law firm run by Communists and engaged in defending Huey Newton and other radicals accused of killing cops and other violent acts.
But the hypocrisy by Clinton on this matter and the acrobatic cherry-picking by Stephanopoulos are simply staggering.
— jhm Apr 18, 03:37 PM #
I think that this reflects far more poorly on the Woods Fund than it does on Barack Obama, who can hardly be held responsible for all of the actions of all of the people that serve on all of the same committees and boards that he’s also on. The foundation, however, put Ayers on the board knowing about his past (or being totally negligent in not knowing), and kept him on after his NYT article, ironically run in the 9/11/01 edition, where he defends his past actions and only regrets not doing more. The Woods Fund now feels that it is “under siege”? Yeah, well, hard cheese. I agree with the foundation’s spokesperson that “the calls were coming at a particularly bad time for the organization” – the bad time being when the world found out about Mr. Ayers and the Woods Fund.
— Bif Apr 18, 05:02 PM #
People do not serve on boards if they disagree with its goals. Ayers is still a kooky left wing Marxist who wants to punish the well off and take their money to be “fair”. That is exactly what Obama said in the debate. “I am not interested in raising taxes to get more revenue but for “fairness”.
I have worked in Russia since 1991 to help people recover from the Obama and Ayers still preach. They must really love what Marxism did to Russia, Cuba, China, etc to keep pushing the agenda.
The association of a candidate can tell us what he/she believes. Being on the board of a free market group would indicate free market ideas. I wonder if the Wood Foundation also wants to steal money from successful to give it to the unsuccessful not to help the poor but to be “fair”.
— Gary Sweeten Apr 19, 07:55 AM #
Obama and Ayers served on the board of the Woods Fund which donated thousands to the Arab American Action Network which uses funds to lobby for open borders, drivers licenses for illegals, college education for illegals, etc. An AAAN leader, Rashid Khalidi, is an anti-Israel/pro PLO activist. See National Review Online, The Conservative Voice, etc. It took me 5 minutes of google-searching to uncover this. The media needs to dig into this and stop protecting Obama’s Marxist agenda. Also, Hamas is now endorsing Obama. Gee, and why is that, I wonder?
— dkw Apr 21, 07:20 PM #
Obama’s and Hillary’s track records both suck. Who is left? Your a fool no matter who you vote for this year.Sure wish we could start over on our choices for president but it stands to reason. Nice, smart sensible people want nothing to do with the White House mess.
— john boyd May 13, 07:32 AM #