During Wednesday night’s debate, Barack Obama told John McCain that the McCain campaign’s intense focus upon Obama’s ties to former Weatherman Bill Ayers “says more about your campaign than it does about me.” On Thursday, according to The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Team McCain and the RNC started a major robocall initiative designed to link Obama with Ayers — and it might not square with state laws in every case.

Update:As Talking Points Memo reports, McCain’s camp has rolled out robocalls on other topics as well.


Sam Stein in The Huffington Post:

The call begins: “Hello. I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC,” before telling recipients that they “need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans.”

More remarkable than the message (coming after a presidential debate in which John McCain said he didn’t care about a “washed up terrorist”) is the reach of the campaign itself. The Huffington Post received dozens of emails from voters who had either received the call or gotten a voice mail with a recording. Reports came from Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, West Virginia, Maine and even Georgia

Several readers in Minnesota also reported receiving the call, which could be a violation of that state’s laws.

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