Wealthy white businessman Joe Ricketts has decided to back off from his consideration of sponsoring a hate-filled $10 million campaign against President Obama by linking him to his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, according to a report in the New York Times.
After the story was broken by the Times yesterday, resulting in a barrage of national coverage and denunciation—in addition to calls to boycott TD Ameritrade, a company Ricketts founded, and to oppose efforts by his family-owned Chicago Cubs to seek public financing to improve Wrigley Field—Ricketts decided to back off from the proposal and issue a series of statements distancing himself from it.
The slick 54-page proposal states that “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way.”
After a spokesman for Ricketts told the Times that the proposal was under consideration by Ricketts, Ricketts backed off yesterday and said that he it was not in keeping with his political style. While Ricketts’ sons were part of the group considering the ad, his daughter Laura, a gay proponent of same-sex marriage, is a major fundraiser for President Obama.
