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.
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. Throughout his career, Anderson, a well-known consultant in Washington, has worked for a slew of campaigns, including Gov. Mitt Romney in 2008. He also contributes to Politico a few times per year. In an August 2011 column, he chided conservatives and “Republican elites” for what he called “Perryphobia.” And he wasn’t officially working for the Perry campaign yet.
Of course, Washington being Washington, there are other links between the Perry campaign and Cain’s failed Senate bid. The pollster for the Cain U.S. Senate campaign was Tony Fabrizo, who now also works for Gov. Perry.
Fabrizo and the OnMessage team worked together on Florida governor Rick Scott’s insurgent campaign and other campaigns. Fabrizo failed to return phone calls.
So did Politico get the story from Anderson and the Perry camp? When CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Poltico’s editor-in-chief John Harris if his publication was “tipped off by a rival campaign” Harris chuckled, passed, and referred to a similar question Cooper had asked Politico’s Jonathan Martin the night before. “Jonathan was on message last night and I will try to stay on message,” Harris said.
Asked about the “on message” reference, Harris told me: “There was no code or inside joke. We are simply telling our reporters to stick to published story.”
As for the story itself, Cain campaign officials complain Politico’s piece was an ambush. When Politico’s Martin contacted Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon on late in the day on October 19, Gordon says Martin didn’t supply any details or documents that would allow the campaign to evaluate the claims. There were no names, locations, or exact descriptions of what Cain is alleged to have said or done. Gordon and the campaign say they couldn’t respond because they had no idea what they were responding to. Gordon even begged Harris to send him copies of any documents with the names blacked out. Harris refused.
Politico’s published piece is equally vague on what happened, saying only that:
“On the details of Cain’s allegedly inappropriate behavior with the two women, POLITICO has a half-dozen sources shedding light on different aspects of the complaints.
The sources — including the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship."
Indeed, no one—the two women, the National Restaurant Association board member that Politico cites as its source, Politico itself, one of the aggrieved women’s attorney Joel Bennett, the National Restaurant Association itself—has supplied any concrete details of alleged harassment.
Washington attorney Joel P. Bennett, who represents one of the two women who claim that Cain mistreated her, doesn’t have a copy of agreements the women signed with the National Restaurant Association. “I haven’t seen a copy of this in 12 years,” he told me, adding that he hopes to get a copy from the National Restaurant Association. His client asked him to stop giving interviews. In the past 24 hours, he said, he had appeared on NBC, CBS, NYT and NPR.
The National Restaurant Association spokesperson, Sue Hensley, said that the association is bound by confidentiality agreements and employee-privacy regulations and cannot release any documents or comment in any way.
The Cain campaign, and even Cain himself, begged the association to at least supply some details, campaign officials say. Citing the confidentiality agreements, the association refused.
So Cain and the public are left boxing against shadows. And Cain is no longer on message. “Let’s just say that we would never do something like this,” Cain says. “It gives politics a bad name.”
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.
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. Throughout his career, Anderson, a well-known consultant in Washington, has worked for a slew of campaigns, including Gov. Mitt Romney in 2008. He also contributes to Politico a few times per year. In an August 2011 column, he chided conservatives and “Republican elites” for what he called “Perryphobia.” And he wasn’t officially working for the Perry campaign yet.
Of course, Washington being Washington, there are other links between the Perry campaign and Cain’s failed Senate bid. The pollster for the Cain U.S. Senate campaign was Tony Fabrizo, who now also works for Gov. Perry.
Fabrizo and the OnMessage team worked together on Florida governor Rick Scott’s insurgent campaign and other campaigns. Fabrizo failed to return phone calls.
So did Politico get the story from Anderson and the Perry camp? When CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Poltico’s editor-in-chief John Harris if his publication was “tipped off by a rival campaign” Harris chuckled, passed, and referred to a similar question Cooper had asked Politico’s Jonathan Martin the night before. “Jonathan was on message last night and I will try to stay on message,” Harris said.
Asked about the “on message” reference, Harris told me: “There was no code or inside joke. We are simply telling our reporters to stick to published story.”
As for the story itself, Cain campaign officials complain Politico’s piece was an ambush. When Politico’s Martin contacted Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon on late in the day on October 19, Gordon says Martin didn’t supply any details or documents that would allow the campaign to evaluate the claims. There were no names, locations, or exact descriptions of what Cain is alleged to have said or done. Gordon and the campaign say they couldn’t respond because they had no idea what they were responding to. Gordon even begged Harris to send him copies of any documents with the names blacked out. Harris refused.
Politico’s published piece is equally vague on what happened, saying only that:
“On the details of Cain’s allegedly inappropriate behavior with the two women, POLITICO has a half-dozen sources shedding light on different aspects of the complaints.
The sources — including the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship."
Indeed, no one—the two women, the National Restaurant Association board member that Politico cites as its source, Politico itself, one of the aggrieved women’s attorney Joel Bennett, the National Restaurant Association itself—has supplied any concrete details of alleged harassment.
Washington attorney Joel P. Bennett, who represents one of the two women who claim that Cain mistreated her, doesn’t have a copy of agreements the women signed with the National Restaurant Association. “I haven’t seen a copy of this in 12 years,” he told me, adding that he hopes to get a copy from the National Restaurant Association. His client asked him to stop giving interviews. In the past 24 hours, he said, he had appeared on NBC, CBS, NYT and NPR.
The National Restaurant Association spokesperson, Sue Hensley, said that the association is bound by confidentiality agreements and employee-privacy regulations and cannot release any documents or comment in any way.
The Cain campaign, and even Cain himself, begged the association to at least supply some details, campaign officials say. Citing the confidentiality agreements, the association refused.
So Cain and the public are left boxing against shadows. And Cain is no longer on message. “Let’s just say that we would never do something like this,” Cain says. “It gives politics a bad name.”
14 comments:
I guess it is pretty good that Cain is actually telling the truth. But the thing is that Perry does not look good by attacking Cain's personal life. I agree that it is a pretty important thing when someone undergoes sexual harassment charges, but Perry should know better. He should just attack his policies and ideas, not him as a person. Politics used to be this way, and that is why more things actually happened, like social security and etc. But, nowadays I don't even think that those can be passed again because of these kind of attacks. These party divisions have really created problems within our government, and in order for our government to be remedied is to move away from parties and move towards stabilizing our government.
I guess it is pretty good that Cain is actually telling the truth. But the thing is that Perry does not look good by attacking Cain's personal life. I agree that it is a pretty important thing when someone undergoes sexual harassment charges, but Perry should know better. He should just attack his policies and ideas, not him as a person. Politics used to be this way, and that is why more things actually happened, like social security and etc. But, nowadays I don't even think that those can be passed again because of these kind of attacks. These party divisions have really created problems within our government, and in order for our government to be remedied is to move away from parties and move towards stabilizing our government.
I believe that this is a perfect example of the media influencing politics (just like what we read in chapter 9). Honestly I do believe that this was a professional attack due to his status in th presidential race. I don't know for sure if these claims are true, but just having the claim in the media causes an uproar. I think its a little suspicious that the women mentioned in the leak haven't come forward to give their side of the story. Do these women just have a lot of class and would like to maintain their privacy, or were they paid off to keep quiet? I'm sure any news station would love to pay them for a tell-all exclusive interview. If the claim is true or not, I don't think we'll ever know for sure.
I believe that this is a perfect example of the media influencing politics (just like what we read in chapter 9). Honestly I do believe that this was a professional attack due to his status in th presidential race. I don't know for sure if these claims are true, but just having the claim in the media causes an uproar. I think its a little suspicious that the women in the leak haven't come forward to give their side of the story. Do these women just have a lot of classs and would like to maintain their privacy, or were they paid off to keep quiet. I'm sure any news station would love to pay them for a tell-all exclusive interview. If the claim is true or not, I don't think we'll ever know for sure.
There seem to be too many coincidences that I'm believing the accusation of Perry. However, I have been listening to the radio these days and Cain has been really confusing me with his method of dealing with these sexual harassment accusation. With his back and forth mindset of whether he really did harass the ladies, I'm not sure what to think at this point. It does seem genuine, if he plead for information to be shared because he knew that he is right. Though it might also be reverse psychology.
I would not be surprised if Perry did leak the information. When you are behind in the polls and cannot debate to save your life, there's only one thing to do. And who better to destroy than the GOP front-runner who is passing everyone in every category.
This whole situation shows a lot about the candidates and the republican party in general. Herman Cain is blaming the claims on Perry's campaign, but this is probably just to get the spotlight off of him, and seems to not be working. The fact that Cain has changed his story time and again is fishy, and beyond that, the fact that his poll numbers are still high kind of scares me. Also, this shows that the Republican party in general is still looking for somebody besides Romney to lead them, even if it be someone with no knowledge of foreign policy/geography/who has nukes and who doesn't!
Someone's lying. Cain said he told Anderson 8 years ago about the sexual harrasment situation. Anderson says he didn't find out until the Politico "broke" the story. But, both the Perry and Cain campaigns are on the defense. Cain's because of the sexual harrasment. Perry's because Cain's accuses Perry's of "leaking" the story. Who really benefits from having these two campaigns on the defense? How about Romney? Regardless of who "leaked" the story (Cain does make a logical arguement for the leak coming from Perry), this "leak" looks like business as usual - smear campaigns and mud slinging.
This is why politicians have become pathetic and corrupt. They attack stuff from way back in the past regradless of whether the opponent was covering it up or put it out in the open. Rick Perry seems to be doing everything he can to try to get back in the race, which is not working. No one wants a president who is untrustworthy and a bad mouth. I agree that Cain's allegations aren't that great but atleast he was forthcoming and let people know. Regardless these candidates need to focus on what they can do for America and not how they can make their opponents look bad.
This whole situation is quite fishy. I do not believe that Rick Perry's campaign members were the source of the leak. Though there are giant arrows that point to them I believe that it's a false accusation to blame them because even though throughout the majority of the voting community Herman Cain will be known as the Presidential candidate who sexually harrassed a woman most likely losing votes for him, there is also the small percentage of the voting community who doesn't pay close attention to the stories but simply hears a name causing Herman Cain to gain votes. Another thing that makes this whole situation fishy are the descriptions of the sources and the fact that when Herman Cain's campaign asked for papers with more details of the encounters with the women and didn't recieve any so they are unable to deny specifically what happened and are also unable to specifically prove that he didn't do anything but for Herman Cain all that he can do for now is deny that he has ever done anything of this sort until details and such are given to his campaign.
I think that it is kind of suspicious that Herman Cain would 'all of a sudden' be accused of harrasment. Especially since he is, at least to Rick Perry, considered a threat. He vert well may have created this scandal just to get Cain out.of the running.
It seems like today politicians are much more concerned with images rather than actual issues in America.
Hi! I thought this an interesting story. I am of the opinion that there are no coincidences. Curt Anderson and Tony Fabrizo now being on the Perry wagon seems pretty ideal for Perry. I mean, the two having worked with Cain before can give Perry more of an edge. So, I wouldn't be surprised if this sexual harassment thing was Perry's doing. But, I think this was, though slimy and low, a good move politically. Especially since there isn't any concrete and specific information on the two elements of this situation: For Perry, there isn't any proof that this whole thing was his doing. Without proof, people can still find him worthwhile and not a lame-o. For Cain: The lack of information is not that helpful. Chances are, the whole sexual harassment thing isn't as bad as the public thinks. Thought there isn't any proof this is still damaging for Cain's campaign.
No politician ever says the truth, everything is a half truth. Anything told in politics with eventually be twisted to fit the enemies of that politician. This is a case of mudslinging that did a decent job of putting Cain on the defense and distracting him. In the long run this is not important, but in the personal battle it is a low blow that with slow Cain's campaign down a little.
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