By Lisa Lerer - Nov 8, 2011 1:07 PM GMT+0700
Herman Cain denied detailed claims of inappropriate sexual behavior made by a fourth woman yesterday, as the Republican presidential candidate seeks to control the scandal threatening to derail his campaign.
“We are taking this head on,” he said in an interview on ABC television’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last night. “There’s not an ounce of truth in all of these allegations.”
Sharon Bialek, a single mother from Chicago, accused Cain of sexually assaulting her after she sought his help in finding a job in 1997. Speaking at a news conference in New York, she said Cain reached under the skirt of her suit for her genitals and pushed her head toward his crotch after a dinner meeting to discuss her job search.
“You want a job, right?” Bialek said Cain told her when she objected to his behavior.
The explicit allegations, carried live on national television, heightens the difficulties facing Cain as he works to maintain his position as the leading challenger to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the Republican race.
“There’s no death blow for Herman Cain; it’s a death of a thousand cuts,” said Michael Robinson, a senior vice president at crisis management firm Levick Strategic Communications. “He’s going to die from excessive bleeding.”
As Bialek addressed reporters, the Cain campaign issued a statement dismissing the allegations as “completely false.”
“Mr. Cain has never harassed anyone,” said the statement.
Cain plans to hold a press conference today in Phoenix, Arizona to address the allegations.
The Fourth Woman
Bialek is the fourth woman -- though the first publically identifying herself -- to accuse the former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive officer of inappropriate sexual behavior while he was head of the Washington-based National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s.
“Come clean,” she urged Cain yesterday, asking him to confess to any inappropriate conduct. “Admit what you did.”
Bialek, identified as a Republican by her lawyer, Los Angeles-based Gloria Allred, said she first met Cain when she attended a restaurant association convention. After she was let go by the group’s Chicago-based educational foundation about a month later, she reached out to him for help in finding a new job. The two decided to meet up in July 1997 in Washington.
When she checked into a Washington hotel, she said she was surprised to discover she had been given a “palatial suite” rather than a standard room. Cain later told her that he had “upgraded” her, she recounted.
Job Serach
After discussing her job search with Cain over dinner, he offered to drive Bialek to the group’s offices for a tour of the national headquarters, she said.
“Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals” while they were in the car, she said.
“He also grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch,” she said, voice shaking.
Bialek said she asked Cain to stop, which he did. She said she didn’t file a sexual harassment complaint because she was no longer employed by the association.
Allred, a sex discrimination lawyer known for representing high-profile accusers, told reporters that Bialek isn’t publicizing her claims in hopes of making money.
“She could have attempted to sell her story but chose not to do so,” Allred said.
Filing for Bankruptcy
Bialek twice filed for bankruptcy protection, first in 1991 and again in 2001, according to court records. In the 2001 petition, Bialek listed about $14,000 in credit card debts and $17,273.76 in legal fees owed to an attorney who represented her in a suit seeking child support, according to court records.
Rather than focusing on Bialek, Cain’s campaign targeted Allred, describing her in a statement as an “activist celebrity lawyer.”
Mark Corallo, a Republican crisis communication strategist, said Allred hurts Bialek’s credibility. “It ends up looking like an Entertainment Tonight story instead of a real news story,” he said.
Cain aides say the allegations aren’t slowing momentum for his presidential bid. He raised $1.6 million in the five days after the harassment claims surfaced in an Oct. 30 article in Politico, his campaign reported.
National surveys of the Republican race show him still vying with Romney for first place, as he was before the complaints surfaced. A USA Today/Gallup poll released yesterday found the two men each backed by 21 percent of self-indentified Republican and Republican-leaning voters.
No More Questions
Cain vowed not to respond to any more questions about the allegations in comments after a one-on-one debate with rival Newt Gingrich in Texas on Nov. 5.
“You got it,” he snapped at reporters after being asked if he planned to never answer questions about the incidents.
Still, a number of high-profile Republicans have publicly urged Cain to address the allegations in greater detail.
“What he wants to do is get back on message, and the way to do that is to get all the facts on the table, get it behind him,” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican, said in a Nov. 6 interview on MSNBC’s “Meet The Press.”
Two other women who had worked at the restaurant association filed formal sexual harassment complaints against Cain and were paid settlements for their claims. Both women signed confidentiality agreements prohibiting them from discussing the details of the incidents.
Joel Bennett, a lawyer representing one of the women, said in a Nov. 5 statement to reporters that she complained about a “series of inappropriate behaviors” and “unwanted advances.”
A third woman told the Associated Press on Nov. 3 that she considered filing a complaint against Cain for what she considered aggressive behavior, including inviting her to his corporate apartment.
Bialek said: “I’m coming forward to give a face and voice to those women who cannot or for whatever reason do not wish to come forward.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Lerer in Washington at llerer@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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