page_title: Herman Cain 2012 presidential campaign
section_title: Sexual harassment allegations
hierarchical_section_title: Herman Cain 2012 presidential campaign / The campaign / Controversies / Sexual harassment allegations
caption_attribution_description: Protester of Herman Cain in Scottsdale, Arizona. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
context_page_description: The 2012 presidential campaign of Herman Cain, an American businessman and radio host, began shortly after the 2010 midterm elections. He ran for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.
  Although he was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate, Cain stopped short of a full-fledged candidacy before the beginning of 2011. Although he was characterized as "inexperienced", and a Washington outsider, as of October 19, 2011, polls showed him to be one of the front runners in the Republican primaries.
  Cain spent a considerable amount of time campaigning throughout the early primary states for most of 2010. Nearly two weeks after the beginning of the year, Cain filed his organization with the Federal Elections Commission as an exploratory committee, under the name Friends of Herman Cain. Cain was a supporter of the Tea Party movement. He was in favor of the gold standard.
  Cain ran as a Washington outsider and became a front-runner in the race in the fall of 2011. However, Cain's support plummeted after several women alleged that he had engaged in sexual harassment or, in one case, a 13-year extramarital affair.
context_section_description: In October 2011, Politico reported that two female employees had complained about inappropriate behavior by Cain during his tenure at the National Restaurant Association. The women reportedly accepted financial settlements from the association which barred them from discussing their allegations further. Cain's campaign initially refused comment, but subsequently acknowledged that the accusations had been made. Cain strongly denied any impropriety, stating: "I have never sexually harassed anyone and those accusations are totally false." He initially denied being aware of any financial settlement with the accusers, but later accepted that some form of payment had been made by the Restaurant Association. He described the allegations as a "witch hunt".
  The Cain campaign hired attorney L. Lin Wood to head a team responding to the allegations. Wood warned that any other women coming forward with allegations would face intense scrutiny and might also be subject to legal action, but said he did not intend to scare anyone away from doing so.
  On November 3, 2011, it was reported that a third woman had stated that Cain had commented on her attractiveness and invited her up to his corporate apartment.
  On November 8, 2011, one of the first two women to accuse Cain was identified as Karen Kraushaar, currently employed at the US Treasury Department. According to Cain, one of the specific allegations was making a gesture indicating his wife's height by holding his palm flat, which one of the accusers found objectionable. Joel Bennett, the lawyer representing Kraushaar, called Cain's version of events "goofy", stating that his "client would never have filed a complaint of sexual harassment on the basis that she was the same height as his wife. It is ridiculous."  Bennett would not describe the complaint, but said he might in the future.
  In an interview with Greta van Susteren, Cain further said that the allegations had been investigated and found baseless. Two days later Cain recalled the incident, claiming not to know what or how much may have been paid. One of the women had been paid a year's salary and the other a lesser amount.
  According to The New York Times and Bloomberg News, at a November 7, 2011, press conference, a fourth woman, registered Republican Sharon Bialek, made allegations of a sexual assault in Cain's car in the summer of 1997. At the time, Bialek had recently lost her job at the National Restaurant Association where she had been a subordinate of Cain's, and she was asking him for assistance in either getting her job back or finding a new job. She alleged that, following a dinner meeting to discuss her job search, Cain reached under the skirt of her suit for her genitals and pushed her head toward his crotch. When she questioned his behavior, Bialek said that Cain replied, "You want a job, right?" Bialek has sought legal assistance from lawyer Gloria Allred. At the press conference, Allred showed what she said were two affidavits from people testifying that Bialek had told them of the incident at the time. The affidavits were not released to the press. Cain's campaign team promptly denied the accusations, claiming them to be "completely false", and repeating that he "never harassed anyone".
  At a press conference on November 8, 2011, Cain said of Bialek, "I don't even know who this lady is." But at the November 7, 2011, press conference, Bialek said that she had a recent encounter with Cain, on October 1, 2011, at a Tea Party event, and that Cain had said he remembered her, and they talked. Amy Jacobson, a Chicago radio talk show host, corroborated Bialek's story about the October 1 meeting to the Chicago Sun-Times: "She talked to him for a few minutes, which made me kind of mad because I wanted to talk to him". Jacobson said that Cain appeared "stone-faced" after smiling at first.
  On November 14, 2011, Bialek's former boyfriend, Dr. Victor Zuckerman, a registered Republican, held a press conference in which he corroborated Bialek's version of what happened in 1997: "When she returned [from Chicago], she was upset. She
caption: Protester holding sign commenting on the accusations against Cain
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