Like disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick before him, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain may find his political future derailed by a woman and phone records. Ginger White, a divorced mother of two who lives in Georgia’s DeKalb County, said in an interview with Fox 5 Atlanta that she and Cain began an affair in the 1990s that ended shortly before he announced his White House bid, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

According to White, the two met in Louisville, Kentucky, when Cain headed the National Restaurant Association and after drinks, he invited her to his hotel room. She also said that he would fly her to different cities where he had speaking engagements.

Describing the affair as “intriguing,” she said that, “It was fun. It was something that took me away from my humdrum life at the time and it was exciting.”

It was Cain himself who actually broke the news that White was coming forward with claims of an affair during an interview on CNN Monday evening. He denied being anything other than a friend to the woman who reportedly has a history of financial troubles and was in need of job advice.

“It’s going to be proved that it was probably something else that was baseless and the court of public opinion does not consider that when they want to pass that judgment,” Cain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

He also declared that she would be unable to produce any evidence of an affair, but White produced copies of cellphone bills that showed the two had exchanged more than 60 phone calls and text messages, as well as two of Cain’s books that he’d inscribed for her. Cain later told Fox News that White had his number because he’d tried to help her financially.

White said in an interview with another Atlanta television station she did not come forward to hurt anyone but decided to do so because of leaks and “threats of people coming out with their version, not that any version is very pretty, but I thought that it was important to at least come out with my story and my side of the story.”

According to the Journal-Constitution report, Cain’s attorney’s response to the allegation is that it should be handled privately.

“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,” Wood said in a statement. “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.”

Cain, who has vowed to stay in the presidential race, has so far survived previous sexual harassment claims, but this latest revelation, combined with problems he’s had articulating coherent and cohesive foreign policy positions, may be the thing that derails the Cain Train.

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(Photo: Greg Bluestein /AP)