Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain says a woman who claimed to have had an affair with him was among “many people” to whom he has provided financial assistance, and that her accusation was “out of the blue.”
“I have helped many people financially . . . She’s not the only person I have helped,” Cain said in an appearance today on Neal Cavuto’s Fox News program. Cavuto asked the Atlanta businessman about the claims of Ginger White, who has produced phone records showing more than 60 texts and conversations with Cain’s personal cell-phone number.
“That by itself doesn’t tell you the whole story,” Cain told Cavuto, explaining that his campaign has not had access to the records White showed to an Atlanta TV reporter. He said he had no warning that White was prepared to go public with her claims.
“Boom! Out of nowhere. . . . This was totally out of the blue,” Cain said, describing the accusations against him as “character assassination” because he was “doing so well” in his campaign. “As long as I was low in the polls, this stuff didn’t come out.”
Cain’s poll numbers have dropped substantially in the past month, as he has battled accusations that he sexually harassed women during his tenure as president of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.
Cain told Cavuto that he is concerned about the impact of the accusations on his family, especially his wife, saying the charges were “having an emotional toll on her . . . she gets upset.”
As for the motives of White, whom Cain acknowledges he has known since 1998, Cain suggested to Cavuto that “people . . . are putting her up to this . . . We don’t know who it is.”
Sources close to the Herman Cain presidential campaign in New Hampshire say that the candidate will be flying into a firestorm of trouble when he arrives in Manchester for events tonight.
Reporters for New Hampshire news organizations today contacted Cain campaign insiders in the state asking if they were aware that at least seven Republican members of the state legislature who had previously endorsed the Atlanta businessman were preparing to rescind their endorsements. These additional defections follow in the wake of reports yesterday that two GOP state legislators who had endorsed Cain had switched their support to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Meanwhile, some of Cain’s most enthusiastic supporters in the state insist that there must be major changes to the campaign. These supporters cited grievances that include what they call the incompetence of Cain’s New Hampshire state campaign director Charlie Spano, as well as widespread discontent among Cain’s supporters with his campaign’s national staff.
UPDATE: Cain is scheduled to arrive this evening in Manchester to hold a private meeting with his New Hampshire supporters at 7:30 p.m., and has scheduled a press conference for 8:45 p.m. ET.
WMUR-TV reported yesterday that two GOP state representatives, Sam Cataldo and William Panek, were switching their endorsements from Cain to Gingrich. Panek told CBS News that the Cain campaign’s “handling of [sexual accusations] does bother me,” and added: “It makes [Cain’s endorsers] look bad too because we’re supporting him.”
WMUR also reported that yesterday afternoon, a few hours after Cain told staff and volunteers on a conference call that he was “re-assessing” his campaign, Cain’s Manchester campaign office was locked, with an “out to lunch” sign on the door — at 2:30 p.m.
Cain is scheduled to return to New Hampshire Wednesday night and meet with supporters and the media at about 8:30 p.m. at his state campaign headquarters at 62 Lowell St., Manchester, said spokesman Charlie Spano. . . .
Cain spokesman [J.D.] Gordon told the Granite Status in an email that Cain still intends to appear at the New Hampshire Union Leader on Thursday for an interview. . . .
Spano said that he has heard nothing to indicate that Cain has changed his planned appearances elsewhere in the state on Thursday.
“This is a serious matter to have to deal with but at the same time, the New Hampshire staff is determined to go forward with the campaign and do what is necessary to compete and bring the message of economic revival through his ‘9-9-9 plan’ to voters,” Spano said.
Spano said the four members of Cain’s New Hampshire staff “believe in his integrity and that this is a man who was helping a friend and has helped friends in his life.”
UPDATE III: While Cain’s New Hampshire operations appeared on the verge of implosion today, the candidate made a scheduled appearance in Ohio, which does not hold its primary until June. The loudest complaints against the Cain campaign this year have been from supporters in early primary and caucus states — including Iowa and New Hampshire — that the candidate has not appeared often enough in those key states.
ABC News reported that, during his appearance today in West Chester, Ohio, Cain said he is a victim of “character assassination” and said he has gotten “a groundswell of positive support” in the wake of an Atlanta businesswoman’s claim that she had a 13-year affair with Cain, a claim he has denied.
RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Just moments ago our Jim Acosta got a very quick one-on-one with Herman Cain, the man who is debating whether to stay in the race for the president. Jim joins us on the phone right now.
Jim, what did he say?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Randi, you know, we only asked him a couple of questions. That’s all the time we had. He was doing the rope line inside a Marriott Hotel in Dayton , Ohio , after wrapping up a speech. And I just asked him very quickly, are you vowing to stay in the race? And all he would say is, we are reassessing and re-evaluating. And then I asked him again, does that mean you’re staying in the race? And he would — he only responded, we are re-evaluating and reassessing. And then I asked him, when will you have a final decision on your future plans? And he said within the next several days.
So, it sounds like Herman Cain is not going to drop out of this race today. It sounds that (ph) he may not drop out at all. We listened to his speech inside this hotel just a few minutes ago and he was very defiant, saying that character assassination would not drive him out of this race. But when we asked him specifically, on the record, on camera, whether or not he is going to stay in this race, he did not give us a straight answer, Randi.
KAYE: Jim, does he seem at all worn down or frustrated by all of this?
ACOSTA: You know, if anything, he looked emboldened. I have to say, he gave a very fiery speech here. It was basically his standard stump speech. It had most of the one liners that people who have covered him closely have heard before. But he really whipped up this crowd here.
He had a very large crowd inside this ball room just a few moments ago and they were eating it up. And they were shouting back to him, Randi, don’t get out of this race. Stay in the race. We need you, Herman Cain. So, the candidate was defiant and so was his audience.
KAYE: Jim Acosta, a nice get, getting a quick interview there with Herman Cain. Thank you for that reporting.
Just got an e-mail from Cain campaign chief of staff Mark Block, acknowledging he had seen this article. The last time I saw Block was when we had a smoke together outside a Cain post-debate party in Spartanburg, S.C., on Nov. 12. I told him then, as I had told him many times before: Bring back Dan Tripp.
We were off the record, so I can’t report Block’s reaction, and I get paid to cover campaigns, not to offer campaigns unsolicited advice. But the word I’m getting out of New Hampshire — i.e., that would-be Cain volunteers have been kept at arm’s length by Spano’s hired staff in Manchester — suggests that the services of Tripp (or someone like him) could come in handy. Just sayin’ . . .
Quit wasting your time and the country’s time trolling Teh Algorez Internetz trying to find the next Presidential messiah. Figure out who your Reps are, figure out if they are worthy of your support or opposition. Your country needs them and you to focus on what’s important.
And no b.s. carping on how you’re in a deep blue district and it’s not possible to win. Fight collectivists where you live first before turning into a zealot over a primary contest on the other side of the country. Remember Barney Frank? Bielat fought the crap out of him in 2010. Sure, Barney won, but it was Bielat and the voters who were vindicated yesterday, when Frank declined to run in 2012.
Ladd stopped by for breakfast here in Northern Virginia a couple weeks back while driving homeward. The Eighth District of Virginia is pretty much George Washington’s back yard. And yet, in our era of Progressivism, the imperial Federal Government has resulted in ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran, he of the 90 stock swaps the day after the 2008 financial crisis briefing to Congress. How can any self respecting, legitimate American fail to support Patrick Murray, even in the face of the worst odds since Washington took on the British Army?
Go long. Go for incremental victories. I hope at the very least to see Ladd do an advertisement in support of Murray’s repeat campaign.
MORAN DELENDA EST. Support Patrick Murray:
Say hello to competitive bodybuilder Kimberly Vay, whose photo I’m posting not just as eye-candy for muscle-girl fetishists, but because she is relevant to the Herman Cain campaign.
The female bodybuilder who once ran a bicycle business with latest Herman Cain accuser Ginger White says the Atlanta woman never mentioned the Republican presidential candidate, who she says was her lover for 13 years. “His name has never come up,” said Kimberly Vay, who told ABC News that she and White were former business partners.
But Vay, who filed and won a libel lawsuit against White, refused to comment directly when asked whether she considers White’s accusations about Cain credible. “When you see the details of my lawsuit,” said Vay, “they will speak for themselves.” . . .
According to Vay’s suit, which was filed in June 2011, White and Vay were partners in a fitness coaching business called No Limit Cycling, and held spinning classes inside the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, which is owned by the City of Atlanta. In November 2010, claimed Vay, White asked to end their partnership, with White continuing to operate No Limit Cycling, and Vay agreed.
On December 9, according to the complaint, White sent a “defamatory” note to a master email list of the company’s clients and to city officials. The email said that White’s business had “come tumbling down [on] the day I invited Kim Vay into my life and my business” and that Vay had turned her “dream” into a “nightmare.” According to the complaint, the email alleged that Vay, a competitive bodybuilder, injected veterinary drugs into her system prior to contests,” and also said that Vay preferred to date black men but had made derogatory comments about black women’s hair.
Vay’s complaint termed the allegation about drug use “false, malicious, defamatory” and “reckless,” and therefore libelous.
Does this exonerate Cain? Not necessarily. But it would seem to indicate that when White doesn’t get her way, she can be extraordinarily vengeful toward whoever she’s angry at.
Ginger White, an unemployed twice-divorced single mom who is nine months behind on her rent and made libelous accusations of racism and drug abuse against her ex-business partner.
Everybody keeps saying there’s an awful lot of smoke for there to be no fire, but each of these women has something in her background that tends to taint her credibility. A month into this, and we have no actual proof that Cain did anything wrong.
The 2012 campaign just keeps getting weirder and weirder. When this year began, I never imagined that covering a presidential campaign would compel me, as a professional journalist, to publish a photo of this bizarrely muscular woman who probably inspires perverse lust in your depraved hearts.
Look, I’ve just endured my own Disastrous Month of Pain, OK? But I seriously doubt that 78 days from now I’m gonna be grousing bitterly about Gloria Allred and Ginger White. So why — 78 days after the Tampa debate — is Ace still ax-grinding against Michele Bachmann?
What’s especially interesting is that Bachmann signs up so willingly for Sacrifice Attacks. Some attacks are kind of over the top and involve a lot of blowback; they hurt the person making them as much or more than the target of the attack. Gardasil, for example. That more or less took Bachmann out of things.
And that wasn’t entirely unforeseeable. A lot of people — including Republicans — are not so jazzed about the anti-vax swamp that a lot of the animus there seemed to be coming from. And her cloyingly emotional appeal — “Little. Girls.” — came off as shameless.
Plus, her convenient My Daughter Came Out a Retard mystery witness.
TAMPA, Fla. — Rick Perry came into last night’s debate here with a target on his back, leading in the polls only a month after his late entry into the Republican presidential campaign. His fellow GOP candidates fired at the Texas governor all night, but it wasn’t until Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said the phrase “innocent little 12-year-old girls” that he suffered any serious wound. . . .
You can call that a “cloyingly emotional appeal” if you want, but it was absolutely devastating in terms of Perry’s support among conservative moms. Don’t take my word for it: Ali Akbar was in the audience in Tampa, sitting among a bunch of Tea Party women who came into the debate pro-Perry. Afterwards? Thumbs down.
Was the Gardasil issue overblown, misrepresented, misunderstood? Tell it to conservative mom Michelle Malkin. But why blame Bachmann? Because you think she’s stupid? Because she’s a woman? Because her attack on your guy Perry was effective?
Rather than look for a Palin-like candidate, doesn’t it just make more sense to write in Palin?
“Hey, let’s undermine Bachmann in Iowa — just for spite!”
Ultimately, it wasn’t Michele Bachmann or any other Republican rival who destroyed Rick Perry. He surfed into the race on a tsunami wave of overconfidence, his campaign led by a bunch of cutthroat assholes who had just finished sabotaging Newt Gingrich.
They convinced a lot of people — Ace among them — to climb aboard The Smilin’ Texan Express for a one-way ride to glory.
Perry auto-destructed and keeps bumbling onward toward greater humiliation. So why keep beating up on Bachmann? Why scapegoat her, instead of blaming the geniuses who sold you on Perry? (“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”) Or why not own up to letting yourself get sold?
It’s been non-stop pain for me lately, Ace, so I’m not here to rub salt in your wounds, but . . . beating up on a girl? C’mon. Let it go, man.
Some in the comments are wanting to turn this into “Why Everybody Should Hate Ace,” which isn’t my intention at all. Ace loved him some Perry, which required him to do some hating on everybody else — especially anyone who attacked Perry (Bachmann and, to a lesser extent, Santorum) or appeared to prosper at Perry’s expense (Cain).
Honestly, I get it: Vengeance is fun, and hate is a habit, which is why I can’t stand me no Newt Gingrich. What Newt did to Doug Hoffman was so wrong and so stupid as to make Newt permanently unacceptable to me. When Hoffman forgave Newt, I was shocked beyond words. Dude, if I’d been screwed over that bad, I wouldn’t even have taken Newt’s call.
Ace is a good blogger, and one of the best at eviscerating liberals. His work on WeinerGate was heroic and — just in case you didn’t realize it — Ace ought to take a bow for Barney Frank’s retirement. No blogger did more than Ace to promote Sean Bielat, and it was Bielat’s 2010 challenge, combined with re-districting, that convinced Barney to hang it up.
Ace and I (and evidently many of y’all) are having a disagreement over a contested primary. It happens, and we can’t let ourselves go all Montagues and Capulets over this stuff. Because next August, if we find ourselves watching Mitt Romney give his acceptance speech in Tampa, we’re all going to have to find a way to convince our fellow Americans that this was The Greatest Acceptance Speech Ever.
Like we really mean it.
Am I looking forward to that? No, but if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, it’s what I’ll be doing, and I’ll keep pushing Romney as long as there is any real hope he can beat Obama.
Then I’ll go to the voting booth on Nov. 6, 2012, and probably vote Libertarian again, just to defy the GOP Establishment sons of bitches who keep ramming these doomstruck losers down our throats.
Anyway . . .
Don’t hate Ace. He’s a good manewok to have on our side.
You know your current course is financially suicidal. Those who say otherwise are the ones who are culpable for the current mess.
So, if not Ron Paul’s ideas, and not the status quo, then what?
“Over the next several days, we are going to continue with the schedule as usual,” he said. “I’ve got a major speech tonight at Hillsdale College on national security and foreign policy and I will deliver it with vim, vigor, and enthusiasm. And then tomorrow we’ve got some media appearances scheduled. So we’re going to continue until we complete our assessment over the next several days.”
“But if a decision is made, different than to plow ahead, you all will be the first to know,” he said. “So until that time, I want to continue to thank you all for your support, thank you for your prayers. It’s taken an emotional toll, but the people in the audience tonight will never know it.”
So said Mrs. Herman Cain, when told of the allegations made by Ginger White. That quote was from Herman Cain’s appearance on Wolf Blitzer’s show, in which he made a flat denial:
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”
Asked directly by Mr. Blitzer, “Was this an affair?” Mr. Cain responded, “It was not.”
But then Cain’s lawyer, Lin Wood, issued a non-denial:
“This appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults — a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public,” he said.
If I were a candidate for office accused of having an affair, and my lawyer issued that kind of statement, I’d need another lawyer to defend me against assault charges for trying to strangle the first lawyer.
But moving on, we find some curious facts about Ginger White:
Ms. White is an unemployed single mother. Before the interview, Fox learned that she had filed a sexual harassment claim against an employer in 2001. That case was settled. The station also found a bankruptcy filing nearly 23 years ago in Kentucky, and several eviction notices in the Atlanta area over the past six years.
The station also reported that Ms. White had a former business partner who once sought a “stalking temporary protective order” against her for “repeated e-mails/texts threatening lawsuit and defamation of character.” The case was dismissed, but it was followed by a libel lawsuit against Ms. White. A judge entered an order against Ms. White because she failed to respond to the lawsuit, Fox reported.
“Several eviction notices”? She is supposedly the mistress of a millionaire businessman, but can’t pay her rent? There would appear to be a contradiction involved here.
Beyond any question of whether Ginger White is telling the truth, however, the Cain campaign made at least three different statements Monday: First, there was Cain’s pre-emptive denial on CNN. Then, there was Lin Wood’s non-denial, which raised eyebrows at AOSHQ. Then there was the press release issued by Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon. So the “message discipline” was problematic.
TBogg’s racist black sexual stereotype slam on Herman Cain as a “jungle boogie black stud” who has “Sexed Up Every Woman In America Including Your Mom.” Racist TBogg spices up the post with some white go-go boot betties looking to go down on a big bad black Cadillac-drivin’ Shaft-style mofo.
Ginger White . . . has liens and civil judgments in Kentucky and Georgia dating back to 1994. Eleven of those liens have been filed since 2009, with nine in 2011. The owners of her apartment complex in Dunwoody, Georgia have sued her for non-payment of rent nearly every month since the beginning of the year.
White, a 46-year-old unemployed single mother who is at least twice divorced, was described by WAGA as an Atlanta-area businesswoman. . . . According to WAGA, she filed a sex harassment claim against an employer ten years ago, and the case was settled. . . .
In January, there is a scheduled court date in an unrelated civil suit filed against her by a former business partner, Kimberly Vay, who alleges that White stalked and harassed her and had sought a protective order. A judge has entered a default judgment in Vay’s favor.
