First...
Washington (CNN) -- Amid accusations and denials about who leaked what, Herman Cain prepared for a radio interview that will be his first public comment Thursday on the sexual harassment allegations that have dominated his front-running campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Cain was scheduled as a guest on conservative broadcaster Sean Hannity's syndicated program at 4 p.m. EDT. Meanwhile, one of two women who reportedly accused Cain of sexual harassment in the late 1990s when he headed the National Restaurant Association could issue her first statement on what happened as early as Friday.
The allegations have dominated Cain's campaign this week as the former Godfathers Pizza CEO rose to the top of opinion polls in his bid to secure the GOP nomination and take on President Barack Obama in next year's presidential election.
They also set off a fierce round of claims and counter-claims regarding how the information became public in the first place. At the same time, Cain's campaign announced Thursday he has raised $1.2 million this week since the allegations first surfaced on Sunday in a big boost from supporters.,
Earlier Thursday, an adviser to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential bid who formerly worked for Cain denied that he was responsible for leaking the allegations that surfaced Sunday in a report by Politico.
The comments by Curt Anderson to CNN directly contradicted a claim by Cain that he had once told Anderson of being accused of sexual harassment.
Anderson, who worked on Cain's unsuccesful 2004 U.S. Senate campaign in Georgia and now is a consultant to Perry's campaign against Cain and other Republican contenders, insisted that Cain never told him about the accusations.
"It's hard to leak something you don't know anything about," he said. Asked directly about the conversation Cain claimed they had eight years ago, Anderson said: "I don't have any knowledge of any of this and, you know, it's just not true."
Cain's chief campaign strategist, Mark Block, told Fox News later Thursday that he accepted Anderson's denial and wanted to move on from the controversy that has dogged his candidate all week.
"Until we get all the facts, I'm just going to say that we accept what Mr. Anderson has said, and we want to move on with the campaign," said Block, who had earlier called for Perry and his campaign to apologize to Cain for allegedly leaking the sexual harassment allegations to the media.
Politico's report Sunday alleged that two female employees at the National Restaurant Association accused Cain of inappropriate behavior during his tenure as head of the organization in the late 1990s. The women, according to Politico, each received separation packages in the five-figure range.
One of the packages totaled $35,000 -- equivalent to that staffer's annual salary, according to the New York Times. On Thursday, Politico reported the other package was for $45,000.
Cain has provided differing statements on the allegations this week, raising further questions about what happened and the ability of the candidate and his campaign to deal with the controversy.
A former businessman who touts himself as a political outsider, Cain has run an unorthodox campaign that made him an early choice of conservatives seeking an alternative to the more moderate Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts.
Republican strategist Ed Rollins said Thursday that Cain's campaign lacks the usual elements to deal with such controversies that inevitably arise.
"They take great pride in not being a real campaign," Rollins told CNN. "They don't have a war room. They don't have a response team."
Rollins, until recently a chief adviser to Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota -- another of Cain's rivals in the presidential nomination race -- noted that Politico first asked the Cain campaign about the sexual harassment allegations 10 days before running the story."
"Ten days is a lifetime in politics," Rollins said. "They should have been prepared for this."
In the interview, Anderson spoke highly of his former employer and suggested that the pressure of the sexual harassment story was getting to the former businessman.
"Candidates, when they get into a firestorm like this, have sometimes come unraveled," Anderson said. "It seems to me that they're kind of grasping at straws and fishing around trying to figure out what to do, how to get out of this."
Saying he was "disappointed" that Cain "tried to use me as a pawn to try to get out of this mess he's in," Anderson said he was "not going to use that to discolor everything I know about the guy."
When asked whether he may take legal action against Cain, Anderson said: "No, I don't have any interest in anything like that."
The Perry campaign also said it did not know about the allegations until Politico first published the story Sunday.
"No one at our campaign was involved in this story in any way," Perry campaign communications director Ray Sullivan said. "Any claim to the contrary is patently false."
On Wednesday, Cain's campaign called a report that a third former employee claimed he engaged in inappropriate behavior an example of "baseless allegations."
"He has never acted in the way alleged by inside-the-Beltway media, and his distinguished record over 40 years spent climbing the corporate ladder speaks for itself," said J.D. Gordon, a Cain campaign spokesman. "Since his critics have not been successful in attacking his ideas, they are resorting to bitter personal attacks. Mr. Cain deserves better."
Wes Anderson, Curt Anderson's brother, acknowledged their firm was recently hired by the Perry campaign. He, too, denied any knowledge of the allegations before the story broke in Politico about allegations against Cain.
Appearing before a consumer group in Virginia Wednesday morning, Cain accused his critics of engaging in the politics of personal destruction, and he insisted his candidacy would survive the maelstrom.
"There is a force at work here that is much greater than those that would try to destroy me and destroy this campaign," the former Godfather's Pizza CEO said. "That force is called the voice of the people. That's why we are doing as well as we are."
Cain referenced a new Quinnipiac University national poll showing him leading the GOP field with 30% support among registered Republicans, compared with 23% for Romney. The survey, however, was conducted almost entirely before news of the allegations came out.
Later, a visibly irritated Cain refused to discuss the issue with reporters, telling them "don't even bother asking ... all of these other questions that you all are curious about."
Earlier in the week, Cain's account of what happened changed from day to day.
On Monday, Cain forcefully denied all of the charges and said he was "not aware of any (legal) settlement." Later, he changed his tune, saying he did in fact know about a "separation agreement" in one of the cases.
The candidate told HLN's Robin Meade on Tuesday that the agreement provided one of his accusers "in the vicinity of three to six months' severance pay." The payment was "not outside our guidelines for what most people get ... when they leave the Restaurant Association involuntarily," he claimed.
While the Cain campaign had first been approached by Politico 10 days before the story was first published, the candidate himself said he was only remembering many details of the incident on Monday.
Cain continued to vehemently deny the allegations, telling HLN: "I have never committed sexual harassment in my entire career. Period."
Meanwhile, an attorney representing one of the alleged harassment victims send a draft statement by his client to the National Restaurant Association on Thursday to seek its approval.
"I will be asking the association to allow us to release the public statement without violating the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions of the 1999 settlement agreement," said the attorney, Joel Bennett.
The association said it would respond to the proposed statement on Friday.
Bennett said Wednesday that his client hopes to "set the record straight as to the complaints," but would provide no interviews.
Asked why his client would not reveal her identity, Bennett said "she doesn't want to become another Anita Hill ... that's not her interest or expectation," referring to the woman who 20 years ago went public with sexual harassment allegations against then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and was the subject of criticism.
Bennett told CNN his client, who is now a federal government employee and who has worked at several departments, would like to put this behind her and is not a publicity seeker.
Cain has so far only released details about one of the allegations, saying it involved him gesturing to one of the women that she was the same height as his wife -- about 5 feet tall -- and came up to his chin.
Bennett did not indicate which of the alleged victims he represents, though he said his client is taller than 5 feet. He said the client is "happily married."
For his part, Cain has said he has no recollection of a second incident. According to Politico, however, one of the allegations involves an "unwanted sexual advance" at a hotel room in Chicago.
Separately, an Oklahoma Republican political consultant told CNN Wednesday he personally witnessed Cain demonstrate inappropriate conduct toward a female employee during Cain's tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association. Chris Wilson first made the charge earlier in the day in an interview with KTOK, an Oklahoma radio station.
The alleged incident "occurred at a restaurant in Crystal City (Virginia) and everybody was aware of it," said Wilson -- a consultant for the organization at the time -- in the KTOK interview.
"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 is currently doing polling for a political action committee supporting Perry's bid, but the group is independent of the campaign and by law cannot coordinate with it.
Meanwhile...
(CNN) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said he was neither on drugs nor drunk during a speech in New Hampshire Friday, as some observers and critics have suggested.
An edited clip of the speech, in which an enthusiastic Perry laughs and jokes with the audience, went viral on YouTube, prompting some to suggest he was on pain medication for a past back surgery or under the influence of alcohol.
But in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published Thursday, the longtime Texas governor said he did not take pain medication or consume any other substance before Friday's Cornerstone Action annual dinner.
"I've probably given 1,000 speeches," Perry told the newspaper Wednesday. "There are some that have been probably boring, some that have been animated, some that have been in between."
When asked about comedian Jon Stewart's suggestion that Perry drank alcohol before the event, the Texas governor said, "It wasn't that either."
"It's not that I wouldn't love to sit down with Jon and have a glass of wine," Perry said. "If he'll buy."
With talk of the speech not dying down, a group of unaligned New Hampshire Republican officials, who attended the event, will hold a press conference Thursday to defend the governor.
Thursday's speakers have not endorsed Perry, but said coverage of the remarks has become a distraction from serious issues on the trail in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
Second, I lied.
There is no good news.
What there is, actually, is, at best, a sad commentary on the state of things as applicable to those who are applying to be the head of state.
And that commentary, ironically, mandates that the job that Barack Obama has done, or not done, since he was elected is academic to the discussion.
Put less eruditely and more essentially...
If what we (that oft quoted group whose needs every politician professes to have a complete understanding of, "the American people) are being offered as an alternative to the incumbent is the very best the Republican Party has to offer...
Barack and the family can stop packing the knick knacks and cancel the U-Haul.
It will be 2004 all over again.
At that time, George W. was not the most popular guy on the block, the economy was not in good shape, his Middle East policies were a flashpoint of criticism and his re-election was anything but assured.
Then along came the Democrats and their "best and brightest" alternative.
I remember saying to someone during that campaign, "you know, it's pretty clear that a very large number of people think W. needs to go...
....trust me, though....John Kerry ain't the guy."
In hindsight, I realize that wasn't as much a consummate grasp of the political landscape as it was a clear grasp of the obvious.
Fast forward seven years.
Time, once again, for the biggest show on earth.
And, regrettably, the circus is back in town.
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