Herman Cain

Herman Cain (December 13, 1945 – July 30, 2020) was an American businessman and Tea Party movement activist in the Republican Party.

Cain graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He then earned a master's degree in computer science at Purdue University while also working full-time for the U.S. Department of the Navy. In 1977, he joined the Pillsbury Company where he later became vice president. During the 1980s, Cain's success as a business executive at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him as chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, in which capacity he worked from 1986 to 1996.

Cain was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from 1989 to 1991. He was deputy chairman, from 1992 to 1994, and then chairman until 1996, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In 1995, he was appointed to the Kemp Commission and, in 1996, he served as a senior economic adviser to Bob Dole's presidential campaign. From 1996 to 1999, Cain was president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association.

In May 2011, Cain announced his 2012 presidential candidacy. By the fall, his proposed 9–9–9 tax plan and debating performances had made him a serious contender for the Republican nomination. In November, however, Cain was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Cain denied the allegations but announced the suspension of his campaign on December 3. He remained active in the Republican Party and was a co-chairman of Black Voices for Trump in the 2020 election cycle. Cain died from COVID-19 on July 30, 2020, at the age of 74.

Herman Cain was born on December 13, 1945, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Lenora Davis Cain (1925–1982), a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and Luther Cain (1925–2005), who was raised on a farm and worked as a barber and janitor, as well as a chauffeur for Robert W. Woodruff, the president of The Coca-Cola Company. Cain said that as he was growing up, his family was "poor but happy." Cain related that his mother taught him about her belief that "success was not a function of what you start out with materially, but what you start out with spiritually." His father worked three jobs to own his own home—which he achieved during Cain's childhood—and to allow his two sons to attend college.

Cain grew up on the west side of Atlanta, attending S. H. Archer High School and the Rev. Cameron M. Alexander's Antioch Baptist Church North in the neighborhood now known as The Bluff. Eventually the family moved to a modest brick home on Albert Street in the Collier Heights neighborhood. He graduated from high school in 1963.

In 1967, Cain graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. In 1971, he received a Master of Science in computer science from Purdue University, while working full-time as a ballistics analyst for the U.S. Department of the Navy as a civilian.

After completing his master's degree at Purdue, Cain left the Department of the Navy and began working for Coca-Cola in Atlanta as a computer systems analyst. In 1977, he moved to Minneapolis to join Pillsbury, becoming director of business analysis in its restaurant and foods group in 1978.

At age 36, Cain was assigned to analyze and manage 400 Burger King stores in the Philadelphia area. At the time, Burger King was a Pillsbury subsidiary. Under Cain, his region posted strong improvement in three years. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury's then-president Win Wallin said, "He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together." At Burger King, Cain "established the BEAMER program, which taught our employees, mostly teenagers, how to make our patrons smile" by smiling themselves. It was a success: "Within three months of the program's initiation, the sales trend was moving steadily higher."

Cain's success at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him president and CEO of another subsidiary, Godfather's Pizza. On his arrival on April 1, 1986, Cain told employees, "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive." Godfather's Pizza was performing poorly, having slipped in ranks of pizza chains from third in 1985 to fifth in 1988. Under Cain's leadership, Godfather's closed approximately 200 restaurants and eliminated several thousand jobs, and by doing so returned to profitability. In a leveraged buyout in 1988, Cain, executive vice president and COO Ronald B. Gartlan, and a group of investors bought Godfather's from Pillsbury.

Cain served as chairman of the board of the Omaha Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from January 1, 1989, to December 31, 1991. He became a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992. He served as deputy chairman from January 1, 1992, to December 31, 1994, and then as its chairman until August 19, 1996, when he resigned to become active in national politics.

In 1994, as president-elect of the National Restaurant Association, Cain challenged President Bill Clinton on the costs of the employer mandate contained within the Health Security Act and criticized the effect on small businesses. Bob Cohn of Newsweek described Cain as one of the primary opponents of the plan:

The Clintons would later blame "Harry and Louise," the fictional couple in the ads aired by the insurance industry, for undermining health reform. But the real saboteurs are named Herman and John. Herman Cain is the president of Godfather's Pizza and president-elect of the National Restaurant Association. An articulate entrepreneur, Cain transformed the debate when he challenged Clinton at a town meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. Cain asked the president what he was supposed to say to the workers he would have to lay off because of the cost of the "employer mandate". Clinton responded that there would be plenty of subsidies for small businessmen, but Cain persisted. "Quite honestly, your calculation is inaccurate," he told the president. "In the competitive marketplace it simply doesn't work that way."

Because Kemp was impressed with Cain's performance, he chartered a plane to Nebraska to meet Cain after the debate. As a result, Cain was appointed to the Kemp Commission in 1995.

Joshua Green of The Atlantic called Cain's exchange with President Clinton his "auspicious debut on the national political stage."

Cain was a senior economic adviser to the Bob Dole presidential campaign in 1996.

Cain married Gloria Etchison of Atlanta soon after her graduation from Morris Brown College in 1968. They had a daughter named Melanie, a son named Vincent, and four grandchildren.

Cain served as an associate minister at the Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta, which he joined at the age of 10. The church is part of the National Baptist Convention and is politically liberal and theologically conservative. The church's senior pastor, Rev. Cameron M. Alexander, did not share Cain's political philosophy.

Cain opposed wearing face masks and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. He attended the Donald Trump rally in Tulsa on June 20, 2020, and was photographed not wearing a mask in a crowd of people also not wearing masks. On June 29, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to a hospital in Atlanta two days later. On July 2, his staff said there was "no way of knowing for sure how or where" he became infected. Cain's website editor Dan Calabrese said, "I realize people will speculate about the Tulsa rally, but Herman did a lot of traveling [that] week, including to Arizona where cases [were] spiking."

Cain died of COVID-19 complications at the hospital on July 30, 2020, at the age of 74. His death from COVID-19 following his refusal to protect himself from it led to the creation of the Herman Cain Award subreddit, where users share news stories about people who died from COVID-19 after downplaying its deadliness or expressing doubts about the efficacy of precautions against it. A month after his death, his official Twitter account (which had come under the control of his team and family members) posted that "it looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be", sparking a discussion about Twitter policies for deceased account holders. In her 2023 memoir Enough, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson noted that Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows remarked "we killed Herman Cain" in reference to the 2020 Tulsa rally.