RALEIGH — Republican state auditor candidate Debra Goldman is defending herself against allegations that she had an affair with a fellow Wake County school board member, according to a newspaper report.

Debra Goldman said that she rebuffed Chris Malone's advances.

Goldman named Malone as a suspect in a 2010 burglary at her home in which $130,000 in jewelry, cash and coins was taken. Malone told police he and Goldman had a "very heated" physical relationship.

Goldman had told police she suspected Malone was involved in the burglary because he had made her feel uncomfortable with his attention.

Cary police reopened the investigation last week but have not said why. Both board members are married, but Goldman is now estranged from her husband, the paper has reported. Malone was dropped as a suspect in the reported burglary.

Malone has said he agreed to Goldman's request to keep their relationship on a friendly basis. On a tape Goldman said was recorded June 23, 2010, at the former Wake school board headquarters, she is heard telling Malone to leave her alone.

"You are not to physically touch me again in any way," she says on the tape.

Malone is heard agreeing to her conditions, adding, "I thought we had some kind of a friendship." In police reports, Malone acknowledges the meeting with Goldman but described it as having happened after the end of their "very heated" relationship.

Goldman also told the paper that her 2010 vote to stop work on a zone-based assignment plan backed by her Republican colleagues was based on concerns about the plan's effect on families, not on ill will to Malone.

"I could not subscribe to any plan that would create racially isolated schools," she said. "But I stood firmly behind the idea of community-based schools."

Malone has said his attorneys have advised him not to comment on the police report. He and Goldman were elected to the school board in 2009 as part of a new Republican majority that scrapped a decade-old classroom assignment plan that aimed for diverse student populations.

Goldman is competing against Democratic State Auditor Beth Wood in the November election. Malone is the Republican candidate for the state House District 35.