Affair Clouds Sheriff Race

[citizen snips]

RALEIGH - The campaign of Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison quickly went into damage control Thursday, charging that the revelation of his affair with a Garner optometrist's wife had to be politically motivated.

Democrats saw the news as a late boost to their candidate, former Sheriff John H. Baker, while Harrison loyalists downplayed the effect on the Republican's re-election effort.

"There's no denying there was an affair, but the marriage was doomed before the affair happened," said Harrison's campaign adviser, Ballard Everett. "Then suddenly, six days before the election, this appears? That says there's got to be a lot of political motivation behind this."

But Andrew Cook, who owns the Garner Family Eye Care Center, said the affair began five months after he married Jodi Cook. He said that he blames Harrison for the breakup of his marriage and that he has no political motivations. Cook noted that he supported Harrison in 2002, when Harrison unseated longtime sheriff Baker. Wake County Board of Election records show that Cook and his wife contributed $455 to Harrison's campaign that year.

"It obviously has been devastating for me, partly because I was actually supporting Donnie Harrison's campaign and going to rallies," said Cook, who is divorcing his wife. "He was supposedly a close friend of mine. I even had him speak to the men's group at my church. It's the roughest thing I ever been through."

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