The New York Times
November 2, 2011
Cain Says Perry Is Orchestrating a Smear Campaign
by Jeff Zeleny, Jim Rutenberg and Michael D. Shear.
WASHINGTON — A defiant Herman Cain accused Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican rival, of orchestrating a smear campaign to destroy his presidential candidacy, as additional accusations emerged Wednesday that Mr. Cain made unwanted sexual overtures to women while he led the National Restaurant Association more than a decade ago.
As he sought to contain the fallout that consumed his campaign for a third day, Mr. Cain shifted his blame from the news media to the Perry campaign. He accused a top political adviser to Mr. Perry of leaking details of one allegation, saying the adviser learned of it while working for Mr. Cain’s failed bid for the Senate in 2004.
A spokesman for Mr. Perry called the suggestion “reckless and false,” and denied that the campaign was the source of the disclosures that have roiled the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Cain took aim at his rival after The Associated Press reported that a third woman had come forward with an allegation of sexual harassment at the restaurant association in the 1990s.
“We now know and have been able to trace it back to the Perry campaign that stirred this up, in order to discredit me and slow us down,” Mr. Cain told supporters by phone Wednesday evening.
The events left the Republican presidential race mired in claims and counterclaims brought about by the sexual harassment allegations, with Mr. Cain blaming Mr. Perry, whose campaign in turn raised the possibility that Mitt Romney’s campaign could be behind the disclosure of the allegations. A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney replied simply, “Not true.”
While Mr. Cain’s accusations briefly turned the attention away from him, interviews with more than a dozen people over the last three days paint a picture of his 1996-99 tenure at the National Restaurant Association that is at odds with his insistence that he never harassed anyone. Several people who worked at the association said they knew of episodes that women said had made them uncomfortable dealing with Mr. Cain.
One of the women whose accusations of sexual harassment led to a paid severance agreement has decided against speaking publicly about her side of the story, her lawyer said Wednesday. The lawyer, Joel P. Bennett, said he would instead ask the restaurant association on Thursday to allow him to release a statement on his client’s behalf that would make it clear, without violating a confidentiality agreement she signed, that her version of events is different from the account that Mr. Cain has offered.
Mr. Bennett said the statement would not go into minute details of her experience with Mr. Cain. “It’s unpleasant and it’s sensational and she does not want to do that,” he said in an interview. He added, “She has a life to live and a career, and she doesn’t want to become another Anita Hill.”
Chris Wilson, who worked as a pollster at the association, recalled in an interview that an incident involving a woman at a suburban Washington restaurant had made several observers uncomfortable. He would not say what Mr. Cain said to the woman or whether she responded at the time. He did not provide any other details.
“If she comes out and talks about it, like I said, it’ll probably be the end of his campaign,” Mr. Wilson said in an earlier interview on KTOK, a radio station in Oklahoma, where he lives. “It was only a matter of time, because so many people were aware of what took place, so many people were aware of her situation — the fact she left. Everybody knew, with the campaign, that this would eventually come up.”
Mr. Wilson, who is a partner at a Republican polling firm, is supporting Mr. Perry and is working for Make Us Great Again, the “super PAC” run by one of Mr. Perry’s former top aides. In the 1990s, he worked for Tony Fabrizio, a leading Republican pollster who is a senior adviser to Mr. Perry’s campaign.
But in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Wilson denied having provided any information to Politico.com, which first reported the harassment allegations on Sunday.
“I had nothing to do with leaking this in any way,” he said, “and I’ve never discussed or shared this story with any of my clients — period.”
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the third woman had considered filing a workplace complaint against Mr. Cain over incidents that she said included an invitation to his apartment.
While Mr. Cain sought to project an air of normalcy around his campaign, he appeared far more agitated than earlier in the week. At one point, he screamed, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Excuse me!” as a scrum of photographers surrounded him.
The intensifying questions were putting Mr. Cain’s tenure at the National Restaurant Association under a microscope, and interviews with several former employees painted a picture of a chief executive who was always game to socialize with his staff. Living away from his family while working at the association headquarters in Washington, he was as ready to go out after work as were many of the younger, single employees, similarly free from family obligations, several former staff members said.
The gatherings had a mix of restaurant industry bravado, innuendo and joking, these people said, and Mr. Cain joined right in, setting the scene for at least one of the accusations of inappropriate conduct, people familiar with the incident said, but also for other interactions that left staff members wondering whether he had crossed a line.
Mr. Cain’s decision not to respond to the allegations in detail, and the addition of new descriptions of allegations, seemed likely to keep pressure on him and the association to provide more information about the accusations.
The unusually fierce exchanges between the rival Republican campaigns injected a new dynamic into the presidential nominating contest, which is set to begin with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. In an interview with Forbes, Mr. Cain identified an operative working for the Perry campaign, Curt Anderson, as the source of the information being used against him, and Mr. Cain’s aides hit the Perry campaign even harder.
“The actions of the Perry campaign are despicable,” Mark Block, the chief of staff to Mr. Cain, said on Fox News’s “Special Report” program. “Rick Perry and his campaign owe Herman Cain and his family an apology.”
The episode provided an unusual window into the inner workings of political campaigns, where operatives often switch allegiances from election to election to work on different races. Mr. Cain has built his appeal as a political outsider who has never held elective office, but during his 2004 bid for a Senate seat in Georgia, he employed two advisers who joined Mr. Perry’s campaign two weeks ago.
One was Mr. Anderson, and the other was Mr. Fabrizio, who is well known in Republican circles and was Bob Dole’s pollster in the 1996 presidential race. In the interview with Forbes, Mr. Cain said he had told Mr. Anderson in 2003 about one sexual harassment case in preparation for the Senate race. It was another new explanation from Mr. Cain, who had previously described the matter as a “witch hunt.”
If Mr. Cain had previously outlined the allegations to his campaign consultants, it remains unclear why, in his account, he has struggled to remember the details now. Mr. Anderson said Wednesday evening that he had not been aware of the sexual harassment case involving Mr. Cain until he read about it this week. He said he liked and respected Mr. Cain, but added: “Herman needs to issue an apology to me. That’s what needs to happen.”
It remained an open question how the sexual harassment allegations — and the accusations against the Perry campaign — would play politically for Mr. Cain. While many conservative leaders have voiced their support for him, his abrupt shift from blaming the news media and the liberal left to suggesting that one of his rivals was plotting against him could cause a new divide in the Republican Party.
Mr. Fabrizio said he met Mr. Cain in 1993 and has had a cordial relationship with him ever since. He said he was “very fond” of Mr. Cain, but decided to work for Mr. Perry because he believed that the governor was the strongest Republican candidate.
“Do people on the right want to take him down? None that I’m aware of,” Mr. Fabrizio said. “There are people competing with him to be the nominee. By being the nominee, that means winning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/us/politics/herman-cain-accuses-rick-perry-of-smear-campaign.html