Herman Cain Campaign Dealing with Sexual Harassment Controversy; East Coast Hit by Unseasonal Nor'easter; Cain Denies Sex Harassment Claims; Four Million Without Power; East Coast Stunned By Rare, Deadly October Nor'easter
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Cain controversy -- GOP candidate for president Herman Cain denying this morning reports that two women accused him of sexual harassment in the 1990s.</s>ALINA CHO, CNN ANCHOR: October surprise -- people cleaning up after a freak nor'easter slams the east coast. It may be days before millions get their power back.</s>COSTELLO: A milestone birthday -- the world's 7 billionth person is born overnight. Boy, it's getting crowded in here.</s>CHO: And a healthy Halloween?</s>COSTELLO: Apple, that's no fun.</s>CHO: Candy is dandy, but all those Halloween treats can haunt parents. How your kids can survive the sugar rush on this</s>AMERICAN MORNING. COSTELLO: And good morning to you and happy Halloween. It is Monday, October 31st. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Carol Costello.</s>CHO: Good morning, everybody, I'm Alina Cho. Christine and Ali are off today.</s>COSTELLO: Up first, the Herman Cain campaign has a controversy on its hands this morning. According to a report by "Politico," the Republican front-runner was accused of sexual harassment by two women in the 1990s while he was head of the National Restaurant Association, a lobbying group. Cain's camp is denying the report, calling it "untrue and an unfair attack." Earlier on AMERICAN MORNING, we spoke to Jonathan Martin of "Politico," one of the reporters who broke the story, and he detailed the accusations that have been made by one of Cain's alleged victims.</s>JONATHAN MARTIN, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: One of the women at one point was asked by Mr. Cain to come to his hotel room. And she complained, the woman did, to a board member at the organization about that request and she was one of the women who subsequently did leave the organization, got a cash payout.</s>COSTELLO: Let's get the latest on the Cain controversy from CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser. He joins us live from Washington this morning. Paul, Cain has these two big speeches later on today in Washington, D.C. I don't think reporters will be asking him about his nine-nine-nine economic plan.</s>PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN DEPUTY POLITICAL DIRECTOR: No, I think that's a safe bet, Carol. And Cain was confronted yesterday by Martin. "Politico" says they had been questioning Cain or had been looking for answers on this story for about 10 days. So yesterday Cain on the talk shows here in Washington, and Jonathan Martin asked him some questions. Take a listen.</s>HERMAN CAIN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You won't tell me who they are. I'm not going to comment about two people who you won't tell me who they are, OK? I'm not going to comment on that because, you know, I think that is one of those kinds of things that --</s>MARTIN: Yes or no?</s>CAIN: Thanks.</s>MARTIN: Last question. Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?</s>STEINHAUSER: OK, so that was Sunday morning. Let's fast-forward about 12 hours and the story breaking online. And the campaign quickly put out a statement. I reached out to J.D. Gordon, the communications director for the Herman Cain campaign. This is the statement they put out immediately after the story hit, and it goes, "Fearing the message of Herman Cain, who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, inside the beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain, dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain's tenure as the chief executive officer at National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. Political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts. Since Washington establishment critics haven't had much luck in attacking Mr. Cain's ideas to fix a bad economy and create jobs, they are trying to attack him any way they can. Sadly, we have seen this before, a prominent conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics." Carol, that statement is interesting because we talked about inside the beltway, Washington, conservatives being attacked by a liberal media. It seems that is one of the tactics the campaign is taking as they try to push back against these allegations.</s>COSTELLO: Well, it's difficult to get more information on these allegations because the two women in question, I guess they settled on five-figure settlements, both of them left their jobs, and they're under orders as a requirement of those settlements not to talk about the allegations. But when Jonathan Martin was questioning Herman Cain he said he did not know who these women were, and that kind of defies logic, doesn't it?</s>STEINHAUSER: It does seem a little odd. Now, we -- I think what's important today is how Herman Cain responds today. Yesterday is one matter. Now today he is aware of this story, his campaign is aware of this story. As you mentioned, he's got two very high-profile events in Washington. First this morning at about 9:00 a.m. eastern a speech at American Enterprise Institute, which is a think tank, and then later at noon, the National Press Club, he's got an event there as well. And as Jonathan Martin said, he will be there, we from CNN will be there and other members of the national press corps. So how he today responds to these questions is very, very important and could be vital to the success of his campaign, carol.</s>COSTELLO: Paul Steinhauser reporting for us from Washington, thank you.</s>STEINHAUSER: Thank you.</s>CHO: I want to turn to "shocktober" or "snowtober," as some are calling it, the Halloween dig-out, the aftermath of a rare and deadly October nor'easter, the storm dumping wet, slushy, heavy snow from Maryland all the way to Maine. Close to three feet of it in parts of New England, leaving millions without power and forcing so many people to cover up their Halloween costumes with coats. I hate that.</s>COSTELLO: I know. It kind of kills the whole idea of a costume at all, doesn't it? It was one of those weekends where travelers were in trouble, too. Forth-eight passengers stuck on an Amtrak train for 13 hours when a rockslide blocked the tracks in central Massachusetts. Train passengers were bussed to their destinations, finally, but it didn't happen until late yesterday afternoon.</s>CHO: But as you said, at least they had a working bathroom. We're hearing stories that make it sound like they were in prison. We're talking about these plane passengers. One said he now knows what it's like to be incarcerated. Here's what happened. Passengers stranded on a JetBlue flight for seven hours as the winds howled outside. They say it was hard to breathe, the toilets were backed up, no food, no water. Just wait until you hear the cell phone calls from inside. We will play them for you.</s>COSTELLO: Yes, they're pretty horrific. Check out this iReport, time-lapse video of the storm from a backyard in oak ridge, New Jersey, autumn turning to winter before your very eyes. The iReporter says he ended up with 16 inches of snow. He set his camera to take a picture every minute for seven hours on Saturday.</s>CHO: Well, in some areas, people are being told it could be a week or more before they get their power back. Chad Myers is live in York, Pennsylvania, this morning. Chad, good morning. Three- quarters-of-a-million people without power in that state, it is just unbelievable. What's the biggest problem there as you wake up this morning?</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: The biggest problem, I think, is that people are waking up in very cold houses or they're waking up in hotel rooms right now and they're trying to put their lives back together. A lot of school districts have canceled or delayed the openings of the school. We are seeing a lot of frost on the windshields, temperatures down to 25 in our satellite truck this morning where we actually did try to turn it on, so that makes the car a little angry when you try to start it this morning. It's going to be a little stiff. I think, though, we're going to see the fog this morning, and that fog is going to at some point in time make black ice on the bridges and overpasses, and that black ice could have been a problem in Philadelphia as well. We'll take you back to Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m., Philadelphia. This is actually Bristol Township, not that far from Philly, I-95, 30 cars in a pileup. One car left the roadway and ended up landing on the roadway below. Two people killed in this crash here and we know of many crashes, even here in the York county area, up toward Bethlehem, on up toward Lancaster as well. People simply were going too fast for conditions and then visibility was down to about nothing. So, for today, some airport delays. Everything's going to be a little bit slow to go. Many of the airplanes will have frost on top. If the frost is thick enough, they will have to de-ice those planes. That may slow you down 10 or 15 minutes for those de-icers to come. We haven't seen any real significant airport delays yet, but I'm thinks as the big planes come in, that could slow you down. Other than that, it's been a fairly decent morning. Cars are moving. Everybody is little more cranky than they should be on a Monday morning, but they got through it, and now I think now it's just back to the recovery. Let me be very honest -- this snowstorm one month from now without leaves on trees is fairly irrelevant. On a Saturday or a Sunday, fairly irrelevant. Kids just go and play. But because the leaves are on the trees and power lines are down, at one point, 4 million customers were without power. That was the key to the storm, it was so early, not that it was so big.</s>COSTELLO: Right. It's nice to see people out so early this morning, chad, but they're cranky because they haven't had a shower. Chad Myers, thank you.</s>MYERS: That, too. And they can't make coffee.</s>COSTELLO: That's right. We'll check back with you later.</s>CHO: That would make me really cranky. More than 4 million people across the northeast are waking up in the dark this morning. It was the perfect storm as far as power outages go -- wet, heavy snow snapping tree limbs that didn't even have a chance to shed their leaves yet, and that made those limbs so much heavier. It's a mess of branches and power lines all over New England, so many spending a second night without either heat or electricity. Utility crews are slowly making progress. Joining me now is David Graves, spokesperson for the National Grid, a utility company servicing parts of New England, including hard-hit Massachusetts. He joins us live from Rhode Island. Good morning, sir.</s>DAVID GRAVES, SPOKESPERSON, NATIONAL GRID: Good morning.</s>CHO: So, more than 600,000 customers impacted in Massachusetts. About half of them are part of the national grid. What's the latest on getting them back online?</s>GRAVES: Well, we were able to restore service to about 78,000 customers in Massachusetts overnight. Unfortunately we still have about 340,000 customers without service, and that's really across the state from the Berkshires all the way eastward into the suburbs of Boston and up into the north shore. We have crews that worked overnight to get those customers back up. More crews went out this morning at sunrise, at 6:00 a.m., and they're going to be working through the day. Unfortunately for some customers we're looking at estimated restoration times of Thursday, late Thursday night, and it could be beyond that for some customers where the damage is most severe.</s>CHO: OK, so, if I'm a customer who's looking at, what, Thursday or maybe longer for my electricity to be restored, I'm pretty angry. And although I realize that it's difficult to get crews out in bad weather, I'm thinking, why weren't you more prepared for this before the storm hit?</s>GRAVES: Well, we were prepared. We began our planning process back on Thursday of last week to make sure that we had all of our crews available to us and all crews did report on Saturday afternoon. We also reached out to utility crews, outside contractors, and we did have crews coming in on Sunday from Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and those will be supplemented today. Our initial forecast called for about -- the greatest accumulations out in western Massachusetts of about a foot. They actually had about two feet of snow, as the accumulations were also much higher throughout other parts of our service territory. So the storm was more severe than originally forecasted. We did have crews available to us. We still have those crews. We're adding to those crews now. What we had were thousands of trees that have come down. We've had in Massachusetts alone 11,000 reports of wires down just in Massachusetts. And we also serve all of the state of Rhode Island but portions of New Hampshire as well. So, the damage was significant and we're hearing it from every utility in the northeast. Listening to your reports, I think from Pennsylvania up through New York State, Connecticut into New England, every utility was hit very hard.</s>CHO: David Graves, spokesperson for the National Grid, thanks for joining us this morning. And I do want to ask Reynolds Wolf was the forecast correct? Was the storm worse than expected?</s>REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It was pretty much on the mark. The thing that's so unusual about it is just the timing of this. I mean, Chad put it beautifully. This event takes place a month from now, it's really not that big of a deal. It is the timing with the foliage on the trees certainly a tremendous difference-maker. We have an idea of what happened over the weekend. Obviously, we've been talking about that. Let's talk about what's happening right now. First and foremost, many people along parts of the eastern seaboard waking up with a freeze warning in effect, especially parts of the jersey shore, eastern long island and portions of the Delmarva peninsula with temperatures right at or below freezing in many spots. That's one big story we have going on. Another thing that's happening this morning much farther to the south in parts of Florida, scattered showers are popping up. In fact, some fairly heavy rainfall, especially in Miami back over to Ft. Myers and Tampa. And because the rain you have in Florida, that's where you're going to have plenty of delays. In fact, let's show you some of those. Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, delays possibly, I'd say under an hour or so. Might see the same in Detroit due to scattered showers, San Francisco, gusty winds might give you a wait or two on the tarmac. Meanwhile, in the Great Lakes, we are seeing that low pressure and that frontal boundary, bringing rain to parts of Detroit, scattered showers for parts of the central and northern Rockies, maybe snow at the highest elevations. And out west, relatively dry with the exception of Seattle and parts of, I'd say, yes, probably in Portland, might see some rain later on in the day. That's your forecast. Hey, guys, your turn. Back to you in New York.</s>COSTELLO: Thanks, Reynolds. Still to come this morning, the world's population hitting an historic milestone, 7 billion and counting.</s>CHO: And what do millionaire NBA players and the Occupy Wall Street protesters have in common?</s>COSTELLO: It ain't money.</s>CHO: Aren't they the 99 percent and the one percent? Well, more than you think is the answer, and we'll explain. It's 15 minutes after the hour.