THE SURVIVAL of Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s campaign is in some doubt after he changed his version of events concerning complaints filed against him for sexual harassment in the late 1990s.
“I am unaware of any settlement. I hope it wasn’t for much because I didn’t do anything,” Mr Cain said on Monday.
The settlements were agreed by the National Restaurant Association, where he was chief executive from 1996 until 1999, with two employees who said he made unwelcome advances.
However Mr Cain’s story has evolved.
On Monday he told Greta van Susteren of Fox News he knew of payment to one of the women. “My general counsel said this started out where she and her lawyer were demanding a huge financial settlement,” he said. “I don’t remember a number.”
Then he said: “Because there was no basis for this, we ended up settling for what would have been a termination settlement”.
When pressed for details, Mr Cain estimated the woman received about three months salary. “I don’t remember. It might have been two months. I do remember my general counsel saying we didn’t pay all of the money they demanded.”
Both women signed non-disclosure clauses with the association. Neither has been identified by US media. Mr Cain recalled an encounter with one of the women, a writer in the communications department who, he estimated, was in her late 30s or early 40s at the time. "I was standing near her and said, 'you're the same height as my wife' ", he told PBS NewsHouron Monday night.
“She’s 5ft tall and comes up to my chin,” Mr Cain continued, holding his palm to his chin. “Obviously she thought that was too close for comfort. It showed up in the actual allegation, but at the time when I did that, in my office, the door was wide open. My secretary was sitting right there.”
Mr Cain said he did not even know of the other complaint by a woman who worked in the association’s government affairs department and said he asked her to come to his hotel room during an event in Chicago.
Mr Cain said he “would pay a lady a compliment”, for example on her hairstyle, but he labelled the resurrection of complaints a “witch hunt”.
The right-wing columnist Anne Coulter saw racism in the sudden emergence of the issue, as Mr Cain, who is African-American, moved to the top of the Republican field. “It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” she said on Fox News. “This is another high-tech lynching.”
That was the term used by Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas when former employee Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991.
In a further blow to Mr Cain, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported that Prosperity USA, a tax-exempt charity founded by his campaign manager Mark Block, paid for $40,000 worth of iPads, chartered flights and other campaign expenses earlier this year in violation of US tax and election laws.