Cain under pressure to fully explain harassment case details

Mr Cain, 65, declared himself the victim of a “smear campaign” a day after giving conflicting accounts of whether a woman who accused him of sexual harassment was paid a settlement to end her complaint.

The accusations date from Mr Cain’s time as head of the National Restaurant Association in the mid-1990s. They have cast a cloud over his campaign at a time when he is leading some Republican polls, two months before voters begin to pick their 2012 nominee.

In a host of speeches and media appearances when the news broke on Monday, Mr Cain first said he was unaware a settlement had been paid. But by the end of the day, he had backtracked.

Mr Cain, who has denounced the allegations as baseless, said he was only aware of one woman who had made the accusation. The news website Politico said there were two.

“Yes, there was some sort of settlement or termination, and I don’t even know what the contents of that was,” Mr Cain said in a television interview. “Since it was found baseless, there was no big settlement or it would have had to have come to me.”

In another TV interview, Mr Cain said he did not believe his behaviour had warranted a sexual harassment claim.

“I referenced this lady’s height and I was standing near her, and I did this saying, ‘You’re the same height of my wife,’ because my wife is five feet tall and she comes up to my chin,” he said.

By yesterday, Mr Cain was crying foul play. He told one TV show: “It is a smear campaign. When they cannot kill my ideas like 9-9-9 [a tax plan], they come after me personally.”

Mr Cain has become popular as a conservative alternative to more moderate Republican Mitt Romney in the race to challenge president Barack Obama. His signature policy is a plan for a 9 per cent personal income tax and corporate tax rate and the creation of a 9 per cent national sales tax.

Analysts said Mr Cain needed to tell a straight story with as many facts about the accusation he can muster.

Republican strategist Charlie Black said: “For any high-profile candidate suffering under such an accusation, whatever facts there are that are known to the candidate should all be known immediately. That’s not the way he’s handled it so far.”

Mr Cain, commenting on whether there was “anything else” to emerge, said: “Not that I know of. I knew about that one case at the restaurant association. I was in business before I ran for president for 42 years, and that was the only instance of accused sexual … harassment, only one.”

Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak, who is helping raise money for Rick Perry, one of Mr Cain’s rivals for the nomination, said it is possible Mr Perry could benefit from the situation.

Mr Perry had been the Republican front-runner when he launched his presidential bid two months ago, but he has lost support to Mr Cain after a series of weak debate performances.

Mr Mackowiak said: “The one thing you can say, as Perry’s numbers went down a few months ago, that support went directly to Cain. The question is, could it go back?”

Mr Cain yesterday skipped a gathering of fellow party hopefuls in Iowa where they were to outline their plans for fixing the damaged US economy. On 3 January, Iowa will be the first state to formally select its Republican candidate for nomination to challenge Mr Obama in the November 2012 election.