Just minutes ago, businessman Herman Cain announced he was formally suspending his presidential campaign. In his statement, Cain attributed the decision to too many “distractions,” as he calls them, on the campaign trail which are now interfering in his personal life.
Video courtesy CNN:
Report from the LA Times:
Herman Cain, the insurgent populist whose candidacy has been ensnared by allegations of sexual impropriety, said Saturday that he is leaving the race for the Republican presidential nomination, saying that the allegations have cast a “cloud of doubt over me and this campaign.”
“As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign,” he said at an event in Atlanta. “I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt . . . on me, on my family, not because we are not fighters, not because I am not a fighter.”
Cain’s campaign had sent mixed signals as to his future since Ginger White, an Atlanta woman who claims to have had an affair with Cain for more than a decade, went public with her story earlier this week. While Cain has said he has been “reassessing” his candidacy, he also, at times, has been fiercely defiant, suggesting that unnamed enemies have been trying to do him in and vowing to press forward.
Cain has hinted that an endorsement is coming soon.