NEW YORK — Leaving little to the imagination, a Chicago-area woman on Monday accused Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of making a crude sexual advance more than a decade ago when she was seeking his help in finding a job.
“Come clean,” Sharon Bialek challenged Cain at a news conference in New York at which she described herself as “a face and a voice” to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous.
Cain’s campaign swiftly denied Bialek’s account. “All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false,” it said in a written statement.
Even so, Bialek’s nationally broadcast appearance on cable television marked a new and — for Cain — dangerous turn in a controversy that he has struggled to shed for more than a week. An upstart in the presidential race, Cain shot to the top of public opinion polls in recent weeks and emerged, however temporarily, as the main conservative challenger to Mitt Romney.
Accompanied by her prominent lawyer, Gloria Allred, Bialek accused Cain of making a sexual advance one night in mid-July 1997, when she had traveled to Washington to have dinner with him in hopes he could help her find work.
She said the two had finished dinner and were in a car for what she thought was a ride to an office building.
“Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt toward my genitals,” she said.
“He also pushed my head toward his crotch,” she added.
Bialek said she told her boyfriend, an unidentified pediatrician, as well as a longtime male friend about the episode.
She said she asked Cain what he was doing, and recalled he replied, “You said you want a job, right?”
None of Cain’s other accusers has provided details as graphic as Bialek’s account. But Joel Bennett, an attorney who represents one of them, said her details were “similar in nature” to what his client encountered.
Allred, a prominent attorney with Democratic ties, moved to blunt any attacks on Bialek’s motives. She described her client as a registered Republican, a single mother and a woman with a long and successful work history.
She also said Bialek “could have attempted to sell her story but chose not to do so,” and knew that by stepping forward, she would receive scrutiny.
Court records indicate Bialek had financial difficulties a decade ago when she filed for bankruptcy protection and reported $4,500 in unpaid rent and $13,000 in outstanding credit card bills. Current property records show she owns a house on an acre of land in a Chicago suburb.
Some of Cain’s allies immediately made a target of Allred, a Democratic campaign donor, rather than focusing any anger on Cain’s accuser.
Georgia state Sen. Joshua McKoon, who has endorsed Cain, accused Allred of “carnival theatrics” fueled by a partisan agenda.
“Her involvement makes it clear that it’s a political smear job orchestrated by those on the left because there is nothing more terrifying than Herman Cain as the Republican nominee,” the Republican lawmaker said.
But Doug Heye, a political consultant who is unaligned in the GOP race, said Bialek’s allegations “are different because they involve a name and specific details.” He said Allred’s involvement will “make some people disbelieve the charges out of hand. … But Herman Cain has to be clear and convincing in his response.”
