IN WHAT must be one of the shortest runs for president of the United States ever, George Allen, a Republican senator from Virginia, is fighting for his political existence, never mind White House ambitions, after being accused by former team-mates on his university football team of referring to blacks as "niggers".
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The allegations that Mr Allen had a long history of using disparaging racial epithets are the latest episode in a desperate summer for Mr Allen that has seen his stock sink faster and more completely than any of his rivals for the Republican party's presidential nomination in 2008.
Just six months ago Mr Allen was considered a front-runner for that nomination. Ed Gillespie a former party chairman had agreed to become Mr Allen's treasurer while top party strategists also backed him. Now, after one of the most precipitous falls from grace in recent political history, Mr Allen's presidential ambitions seem dashed and he faces a mighty struggle to even win re-election to the Senate this November.
Several of Mr Allen's university contemporaries emerged this week to make separate but overlapping allegations against the Virginia senator.
Dr Ken Shelton, a radiologist, who played football with Mr Allen at the University of Virginia, said that Mr Allen "said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place'... He used the N-word on a regular basis back then." Dr Shelton also said that after a deer-hunting trip in Bumpass, Virginia, Mr Allen had asked where the local black neighbourhood was before cutting a dear's head off and stuffing it into a mailbox.
"George insisted on taking the severed head, and I was a little shocked by that," Dr Shelton said. "This was just after the movie The Godfather came out with the severed horse's head in the bed," he added.
The Allen campaign produced a number of his contemporaries who released statements denying the accusations. "I was on the University of Virginia football team with George Allen for the 1972 and 1973 seasons. During that time I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner," said Dr Shelton's room mate Doug Jones.
Mr Allen himself issued a blanket denial . "I do not remember ever using that word and it is completely false for them to say that was part of my vocabulary then, or since then, or now. I have never used such a word."
However Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and a classmate of Mr Allen 30 years ago, insisted that "The fact is that he did use the 'N' word, whether he's denying it or not. He did use it."
"My sources are former classmates who came to me with stories that matched up," Mr Sabato said.
Mr Allen enjoyed a comfortable lead in his senatorial race against Democrat Jim Webb for November's mid-term elections as recently as June. A series of missteps since then has narrowed the gap and polls suggest the two men are running neck and neck.
The latest allegations against Mr Allen are consistent with what his opponents charge is his dubious history on racial issues.
Yesterday Mr Sabato said: "Mr Allen has been getting a taste of presidential scrutiny. In the end, Virginians may well choose to overlook the racial baggage and re-elect Allen. But the presidency is now a bridge too far, or so it would appear."
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