Facing new allegations that he had a long-term extramarital affair, Republican presidential contender Herman Cain told supporters Tuesday that he will re-evaluate “over the next several days” whether to continue his once-surging campaign for the White House.
Cain, already facing charges of sexual harassment or misconduct from at least three other women, told his campaign staff in a Tuesday morning conference call that the latest accusation means “we have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or not they would be able to support us going forth,” according to a transcript published by National Review Online.
But Republicans are already beginning to conclude that Cain’s campaign bid is just about finished.
“I think that’s happening right now and it’s reflected in the polls that people are getting kind of worn out,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told The Washington Examiner. “And those who want to give him the benefit of the doubt, they are running out. I wouldn’t want to be the one to say he should drop out, but let’s just wait and I think he will.”
The latest accusations come from Ginger White, of Atlanta, who claims she had a 13-year affair with Cain, an ordained Baptist minister who is married. White provided electronic messages exchanged with Cain as proof of the affair.
“It wasn’t complicated. I was aware that he was married,” she said.
Cain denied the affair in a television interview and in the call to staff. He said White was simply a friend he tried to help financially.
A Cain aide, J.D. Gordon, told The Examiner that Cain would not quit. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO went on with scheduled campaign events, including a foreign policy speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Tuesday night. Gordon played down the significance of re-evaluating the candidate’s viability.
“It’s a reassessment of where we stand and the road ahead, similar to other times in the campaign’s history,” Gordon said.
Cain’s lawyer, Lin Wood, didn’t deny that Cain had an affair with White. Instead, he told Atlanta’s Fox 5, which broke the story, that whatever happened was between two consenting adults.
“No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life,” Wood told the station.
White claims the affair began when Cain was running the National Restaurant Association, which is the same time frame in which two other women who worked for Cain claimed he sexually harassed them. Cain denied the charges. The women reached a financial settlement with the association and left.
Another woman, Sharon Bialek, of Chicago, claimed separately that Cain groped her nearly 15 years ago when she went to him to ask for career advice.
Despite Cain’s repeated denials and his campaign’s attempts to undermine the credibility of the women who accused him, Cain has sunk from the top of the polls to third place in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, two critical states that will be casting the first votes of the 2012 election in January.
