Sen. Robb Denies Report of ’84 Beauty Queen Affair : Politics: Woman alleges in TV interview that he committed adultery with her. Senator admits hotel meeting, but denies sexual activity.

Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) on Friday denied a television report to be broadcast Sunday that alleges he had an affair with a beauty queen while he was Virginia’s governor.

In a transcript of a 2 1/2-hour interview for NBC’s “Expose,” Robb acknowledged a “time or two” when he was too “close to the edge” of committing adultery.

“I’ve clearly placed myself in circumstances a couple of times that I would describe as appropriate for a bachelor, inappropriate for a happily married family man and I regret that,” Robb said in the transcript released by his staff.

Robb, 51, is married to Lynda Bird Johnson, the elder daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson. They were married at the White House 23 years ago.

A videotape of the NBC interview was shown to about a dozen reporters in Robb’s Richmond office. Robb was in the Middle East.

Robb has hired libel lawyers and barraged reporters with denials of his alleged affair with Tai Collins, a Roanoke woman who was Miss Virginia-USA in 1983.

He told the Washington Post that he met Collins in 1984 at a New York hotel, where they shared a bottle of wine and she gave him a massage. Collins, 28, told the Post that she had an affair with Robb.

Collins told “Expose” that they had sexual relations in the hotel, an allegation Robb called “absolutely, categorically untrue.”

The interview with NBC producer Marion Goldin also goes into previously reported allegations that while he was governor he attended parties in Virginia Beach where cocaine was used. Robb has denied ever using or seeing drugs being used. He blamed the allegations about his private life on political enemies.

Peggy Hubble, an NBC spokeswoman, would not comment on Robb’s denials. “I think people will have to watch the segment and decide for themselves,” she said.

Robb aides also released on Friday a letter from the senator to Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchorman and host of “Expose.”

“I did not commit adultery with Tai Collins; I did not engage in any sexual activity with her; I did not have an affair with her,” Robb said in the letter.

As for whether Robb would sue NBC for libel, his press secretary, Steve Johnson, said: “We’re certainly not foreclosing any option at this time.”

Robb, who served as Virginia governor from 1982 to 1986 and was elected to the Senate in 1988, often has been mentioned as a Democratic presidential candidate in 1996 or beyond. He has said he will not run in 1992.