“He made it very intriguing,” White told the Fox affiliate.
White, who has worked as a fitness instructor, has been embroiled in conflicts that have led to court intervention. According to Georgia court records, she faced civil actions for nonpayment of rent. A former business partner, Kimberly Vay, sued White this year after a dispute that began when White wrote disparaging comments about Vay in a mass e-mail — comments that White recanted four months later as part of a legal settlement.
“She came back and stated that everything she stated in the e-mail was completely false,” Vay said in an interview. “She admitted to making it all up out of anger and frustration.”
The Fox affiliate described White as an unemployed, single mother of two.
The Cain campaign was alerted to the accusation by the television reporter, who had interviewed White over the weekend. White gave the reporter Cain’s private cellphone number — which appeared 61 times on her phone records over four months. When the reporter sent a text message to the number, Cain called back and said he knew White but had not had an affair with her.
On Monday, the candidate’s denial of the affair differed from a statement issued by his attorney, which said Cain has no obligation to answer questions about it.
“This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace — this is not an accusation of an assault — which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate,” said Lin Wood, whom Cain hired after the sexual harassment allegations surfaced. “Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults — a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.”
Cain said repeatedly that there was no truth to White’s allegations of having stayed with him at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood or elsewhere. “We chased all of these other rumors for two weeks before, and as it turned out they were baseless . . . so we will address these when they come out. But at this point, I want to give you a heads-up. I don’t have anything to hide,” Cain said on CNN.
He said that he does not plan to drop out of the race but that his wife would have the final say.
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford and polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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