Hermain Cain Accused of Sexual Harassment

And the dirty season of the U.S. presidential election begins with a bang.

Pizza baron/ U.S. presidential hopeful Herman Cain is denying a report this morning that claims he sexually harassed two employees while he led a lobby group in the late 1990s. Politico published a report that two employees of the National Restaurant Association quit the lobby group after complaining that Cain, who was then CEO of the, umm, NRA, had engaged in sexually suggestive behaviour that made the women feel uncomfortable. The two women were allegedly paid a sum upon their termination and agreed to never talk about the alleged incident again. However, Politico says its reporters talked to numerous sources at the NRA and this is what they've come up with:

"The sources — which include the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship."

Well, that's a far cry from the sex scandals of, say Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or even "Slick" Willy Clinton, but in the pseudo-Calvinist world of Republican politics, we guess this is utterly egregious (if true, of course). The Cain camp is vociferously denying that these incidents ever happened. Cain, who's leading Mitt Romney in polls of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, says that the allegations are unsubstantiated (after all, the Politico story is entirely dependent upon anonymous sources). The shift from attacks on his platform to attacks on his character, though, does in a way confirm that Cain is now the race's frontrunner.