August 26, 2008 at 7:41am

Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons gave nearly $3 million to the American Issues Project so it can run a TV ad linking Barack Obama to 1960s anti-war radical William Ayers and the Weather Underground.

The national Fox News Network declined to run the ad, the Los Angeles Times reports, but some Fox affiliates in the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan are running it.

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Simmons, who backs John McCain for president, was a major contributor to the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in the last presidential election.

The Web site for the American Issues Project lists Ed Martin and Ed Failor Jr. as its board members.

Martin, a St. Louis attorney, is a former chief of staff for Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, former special assistant to Pope John Paul II, former director of human rights for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and former chairman of the St. Louis City Board of Elections.

He left the governor’s staff amid a controversy over destroyed emails.

This year Martin led a grass roots effort to oppose the takeover of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch by Belgium’s InBev.

Failor, also an attorney, is vice chairman of the National Taxpayers’ Union and executive vice president of Iowans for Tax Relief.

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