I’ve always said what anyone who worked for a newspaper knows: many big stories have their genesis in either sources or tip-off sources that have a motive. Journalism has operated that way for many years. So it stands to reason that many have now said that the REAL story of the Herman Cain sexual harrassment story will be the identity of the person or group that provided the tip to The Politico, which put The Politico on the trail of the story.
According to Robin Miniter, writing in Forbes, Herman Cain believes he knows where the tip came from: the camp of competitor-for-the-Presidential-nomination Texas Gov. Rick Perry:
Was the recent attack on Herman Cain’s presidential campaign a professional hit job? Absolutely, says Herman Cain. And he says he knows just where to look for the guy who did it: At 815 Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia, a low-slung former warehouse in the shadow of a coal plant.
There, beside rusting rail lines, is the home of OnMessage Inc., a Republican-leaning consulting firm recently hired to bolster Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign.
Some of the speculation that it was Barack Obama’s camp never made sense: Obama would most likely love to have Cain as his opponent. And all the (tired) talk about that mean, old, evil “liberal” media was laughable for two reasons: (1)The Politico is not a liberal website and (2)this was the kind of story that had to have its start in some kind of a tip from where somewhere. The Politico editors didn’t just walk in one day and say to the staff: “Hey! I bet it we look Herman Cain has something in his past about sexual harrassment. MORE:
One of the firm’s partners, Curt Anderson, worked on Cain’s losing 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. Cain thinks he’s the hired political gun who leaked details to Politico, a Washington trade publication, of alleged “sexually suggestive behavior” Cain is said to have exhibited towards two women while he ran the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. That story set off a media frenzy which has quickly put Cain’s campaign on the defense.
In the summer of 2003, Cain recalls briefing Anderson—his general campaign consultant at the time—that sexual harassment claims were brought against him while he was chairman of the National Restaurant Association from 1996 to 1999.
“I told my wife about this in 1999 and I’ve got nothing to hide,” Cain told me Wednesday. “When I sat down with my general campaign consultant Curt Anderson in a private room in our campaign offices in 2003 we discussed opposition research on me. It was a typical campaign conversation. I told him that there was only one case, one set of charges, one woman while I was at the National Restaurant Association. Those charges were baseless, but I thought he needed to know about them. I don’t recall anyone else being in the room when I told him.”
Curt Anderson phoned me to say “I never heard about this story until I read about it in Politico. I have nothing but good things to say about Herman Cain. I’m not going to bad-mouth Herman Cain to anyone, on or off the record. I think he is a guy of great leadership and integrity.”
Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said it was “patently untrue” that the Perry campaign had any role in placing the sexual harassment story with Politico.
Aside from knowing about the alleged sexual harassment accusations, Cain campaign officials point to the timing of Anderson’s hiring by Perry as evidence of his involvement. The campaign announced Anderson’s role on October 24, just a week before Politico broke the story.
Does he regret telling Anderson about it? “I don’t regret it at all,” Cain says. “The guy who was supposed to help with strategy should know everything. I put it on the table right from the get go. I wasn’t trying to hide it.”
Perhaps Cain should have known better.
Go to the link to read the rest.None of this changes one fact: regardless where the story came from Cain is not looking good in this crisis. CNN’s David Gergen and other prominent Republicans are urging Cain to get all of the details on this out fast. Gergen writes:
Once we see a real, live woman step forward and accuse a major presidential candidate of sexual harassment and lying, it will almost certainly become a circus with Cain smack in the middle of it. It may become unfair — but it also can be politically lethal. Clarence Thomas survived because he was smart, tough and ready to take on his accusers. Cain so far has shown none of that.
Moreover, the sexual harassment story is only one of the possible scandals brewing around Cain. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this week that a private corporation, set up by Cain’s chief of staff, has given the Cain campaign some $40,000 in goods and services. The report has been overshadowed, but it won’t go away: If that happened, those gifts could be violations of the law. The longer the sexual harassment controversy continues, the more the press is likely to dig in elsewhere.
So far, the greatest source of concern among some conservatives is how inept Cain and his team have been in responding. Politico gave them 10 days to prepare before going public on the restaurant association allegations, and yet Cain still didn’t have his facts and story straight. For political pros, two days of conflicting accounts were painful to watch.
All of which is to say that Cain is now under enormous time pressure to get his campaign under control. He needs to put an end to the sex controversy and do it fast. If he permits this fire to rage through the weekend and into next week, he could well be toast.
What should he do? It may seem a hard call, but it isn’t really. He should announce that he would be fine with the restaurant association releasing the accuser from her confidentiality agreement, invite her to sit down with him and talk it through, and then let each of them make their case to the public. He may have to suffer some embarrassment, but he has to show the country he is strong, open, fair and ready to lead.
Cain may think that is asking too much of him, that the media is prying too deeply and he is being railroaded. Personally, I have some sympathy for that perspective: Too often the media pokes and sensationalizes too much, especially into private life. But he is asking people to entrust him with the most powerful office on Earth. Before we make that choice, is it not fair to voters to get straight answers from a candidate about who he is and how he has acted in his professional life?
Could Perry benefit if Cain stumbles? Most likely, yes. Reuters reports:
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s struggles could open the door in Iowa for rival Rick Perry, who has stepped up his visits and advertising two months before the state kicks off a wide-open nominating race.
Cain’s controversy over sexual harassment allegations from the 1990s threatens to erode his support in the state, where he led a key recent opinion poll, and shift the fight for the loyalty of Iowa’s big bloc of social conservatives.
“This undermines people’s trust in Herman Cain and ultimately it could undermine his chances in Iowa,” said Craig Robinson, a former state party official who runs the Iowa Republican website.
Perry, the Texas governor who has floundered in polls but led Republican contenders in third-quarter fundraising, could be in the best position to pick up the pieces from Cain, who has denied ever sexually harassing women.
“Who can break out of the pack?” Robinson asked. “Any of them could. Perry has an advantage because he has resources.”
Perry has launched two television ads in Iowa and will spend three days in the state this week. That follows a visit a week ago to appear at a conservative forum and go hunting with influential U.S. Representative Steve King.
He has a lot of ground to make up. The Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll showed Perry, who led state and national surveys until a string of bad debates, tied for fifth place with former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich at 7 percent.
That put him behind Cain, Romney and U.S. Representatives Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann. But three-quarters of likely participants in Iowa’s January 3 caucuses — the first contest on the road to the Republican presidential nomination — have no first choice or could be persuaded to switch, the poll found, leaving plenty of room for more shifts in a constantly evolving race.
The former pizza executive has led the half-dozen candidates battling to emerge in 2012 as the top conservative alternative to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has remained steady near the top of the Republican pack all year. The eventual Republican nominee will face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the November 2012 election.
Cain already had come under fire in Iowa for saying abortion should be a family decision, and the new controversy chips away at his biggest political asset — his likability.
But Gingrich — a friend of Cain’s — could also benefit. Gingrich has just done an interview with CNN in which he doesn’t mince words: he says if a Republican running for President’s camp was behind this story it should immediately fire the person involved.
Meanwhile, this story may be far from over:
Oklahoma political consultant Chris Wilson says if the woman behind the reported sexual harassment complaint against GOP Presidential hopeful Herman Cain is allowed to speak publicly, it’ll be the end of Cain’s run for the White House.
Interviewed today on KTOK’s Mullins in the Morning, Wilson, of Wilson-Perkins-Allen Opinion Research headquartered in Washington, D.C. explained he was a witness to the incident. “I was the pollster at the National Restaurant Association when Herman Cain was head of it and I was around a couple of times when this happened and anyone who was involved with the NRA at the time, knew that this was gonna come up.”
Wilson described the woman as a low level staffer who was maybe two years out of college. “This occurred at a restaurant in Crystal City (Virginia) and everybody was aware of it,” he continued. “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.”
Wilson said for legal reasons, he can not discuss details of the incident. “But if she comes out and talks about it, like I said, it’ll probably be the end of his campaign.”
And a third person former employee considered filing a complaint against Cain.
All of this provides a conflict-ridden story for the new and old media, a complication for Republicans who have a good chance in 2012 to take back the White House — and big smiles for Barack Obama.
In the end this “whodunnit” may be for Cain a “wholostit.”
UPDATED: And it gets worse. The Politico reports that a conservative Iowa talk radio host — to repeat a CONSERVATIVE Iowa talk radio host (not the “liberal media”) felt Cain made inappropriate comments to a staffer. Here’s part of the report:
POLITICO has learned that the incident involved a staffer for Steve Deace, an influential conservative talk radio host who hosts a nationally syndicated show in Des Moines. And Deace says he did take offense.
Deace, who penned an opinion piece critical of Cain earlier this month, told POLITICO in an email that Cain said “awkward” and “inappropriate” things to the staff at his station.
“Like awkward/inappropriate things he’s said to two females on my staff, that the fact the guy’s wife is never around…that’s almost always a warning flag to me,” Deace wrote. “But I chose to leave that stuff out [of the opinion piece] and make it about his record and not the personal stuff.”
Pressed about what exactly Cain said to the employees of his show, Deace responded by describing how he himself treats his staff.
“Many a man has been done in by the inability to control his urges,” Deace wrote. “I am no different and just as vulnerable as any other man, which is why I put safeguards around me and hold myself accountable to my wife and other men in my life. Especially since I have very talented employees that happen to be women. I go out of my way to treat them like my sisters. For example, I wouldn’t tell them or any other woman I am not married to nor related to how pretty she is.”
This kind of report isn’t providing a good context for Cain. It’s the small tidbits that some will see as part of a pattern. And, as Gergen notes, Cain can’t put this behind him until he tries to get as much info out on this as he can and get it behind him.
Still, he will be defended to the hilt by his supporters — most likely even if some women come foward and provide accounts that contradict his. This is the way our politics now operates.
But the bottom line is it’s hard to imagine a political party nominating someone with a ton of baggage.
Cain isn’t there yet.
But he’s starting to accumulate quite a few pieces of luggage…
Be sure to read THIS related column.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.