During the campaign, GOP head Jeff Frederick told a small group of Republican volunteers that "both Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden have friends that have bombed the Pentagon."

The remark, a reference to Obama's ties years ago to 1960s-era radical William Ayers, was condemned by Democrats and Republicans after it was published in Time magazine.

Ayers was a founder of the Weather Underground, a radical, Vietnam War-era group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

Frederick was asked about the remark Tuesday during a discussion of the 2008 Virginia presidential campaign with a group of newspaper editors. Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia in 44 years.

"It was a stupid joke I gave to somebody in a small crowd of people and that's what happens," Frederick said. "But you know, it's really unfortunate. We live in a `gotcha' society."

Frederick said he got hate mail, angry phone calls and vicious e-mails for weeks.

Even so, he stood by the comment Tuesday, defending it as true and saying he was taking cues from Republican John McCain's campaign after running mate Sarah Palin said Obama had been "palling around with terrorists."

"The McCain campaign, for quite a while, was getting on me about not being on message, about not delivering their talking points," Frederick said. "And in an effort to do more of what they wanted ... I was doing that, and the Ayers talking point came out."