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More scrutiny for Herman Cain
Herman Cain appears on “Face the Nation” October 30, 2011 in Washington. REUTERS/Chris Usher-CBS NEWS/Handout
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain kept his Washington campaign schedule Monday even as his team accused “inside-the-Beltway media” of attacking him with allegations that he sexually harassed two women while he was the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.
In a statement Sunday to The Associated Press, his campaign disputed a Politico report that said Cain had been accused of sexually suggestive behavior toward at least two female employees.
The report said the women signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them five-figure financial payouts to leave the association and barred them from discussing their departures. Neither woman was identified.
The report was based on anonymous sources and, in one case, what the publication said was a review of documentation that described the allegations and the resolution.
Cain’s campaign told the AP that the allegations were not true, and amounted to unfair attacks.
“Inside-the-Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain,” spokesman J.D. Gordon said in a written statement. “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.”
Asked if Cain’s campaign was denying the report, Gordon said, “Yes.”
“These are baseless allegations,” Gordon said in a second interview later Sunday evening. “To my knowledge, this is not an accurate story.”
