WASHINGTON — Former restaurant executive Herman Cain faced a new set of sexual-harassment allegations Wednesday, with a report that a third former employee had described unwanted, sexually aggressive behavior from him and a Republican pollster saying he had witnessed at least two such incidents.
Cain continued to deny the charges. Speaking to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, he ascribed the reports to “factions that are trying to destroy me personally as well as destroy this campaign.” And he indicated he believes that the rival campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry is fueling them — an accusation that a Perry spokesman denied.
Just about the only thing that was becoming clearer as the controversy headed into its fourth day was that it is not going to go away any time soon.
The third accuser is an unidentified woman who told The Associated Press she had considered filing a workplace complaint against Cain for what the news service described as “sexually suggestive remarks or gestures” when she was working at the National Restaurant Association and he was the head of the group.
The alleged misbehavior occurred at about the same time that two co-workers settled separate harassment complaints against Cain, each reportedly for five figures.
Meanwhile, pollster Chris Wilson — who said he polled for the National Restaurant Association during Cain’s tenure and whose firm has more recently done work for an outside super PAC supporting Perry — told Oklahoma radio station KTOK that he had witnessed harassment by Cain toward a young, low-level staffer.
“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 going to come up,” Wilson told interviewer Reid Mullins.
The restaurant association has not commented on the specifics of the allegations, citing confidentiality agreements that it has signed with the two original accusers.
Joel Bennett, the lawyer for one of the women, told The New York Times late Wednesday that his client had decided not to go public or to make a public statement herself in an effort to shield herself from the media frenzy swirling around the situation.
“She’s not going to affirmatively make any public statements or public appearances about the case. Everything will be through me,” Bennett said. “She has a life to live and a career, and she doesn’t want to become another Anita Hill.”
Since reports of his alleged misbehavior surfaced Sunday, Cain has fought back in a flurry of TV appearances, though his defense has been marred by his shifting recollections and explanations. He first pleaded ignorance of the accusations or settlements but has since acknowledged that he knew of at least one of them.
On Wednesday, he shifted his strategy.
“Don’t even bother asking me all of these other questions that you all are curious about, OK?” he shouted at a media horde at one of his appearances. “Don’t even bother.”
The candidate was accompanied by an apparent bodyguard, who roughly shoved several photographers out of Cain’s way.
But his attempts to change the subject back to his platform were futile — and were made all the more so by his scheduling of a round of appearances in the hothouse environment of Washington, rather than elsewhere in the country, where he enjoys an enormous outpouring of goodwill among the conservative faithful.
In an interview with Forbes magazine, Cain indicated he believes Perry’s operatives are behind the surfacing of accusations that were lodged and resolved more than a decade ago.
Perry’s campaign disputed the notion.
“No one at our campaign was involved in this story in any way,” said spokesman Ray Sullivan. “Any claim to the contrary is patently false. The first we learned of it was when we read the story in Politico.”
