Amid Fallout, Sen. Craig to Explain Guilty Plea in Disorderly Conduct Charge

28 Aug 2007 // Sen. Larry E. Craig faced a firestorm of criticism and a possible inquiry by the Senate Ethics Committee in the wake of his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Social conservatives and one public watchdog group sharply criticized the three-term Idaho Republican on Tuesday and ramped up pressure on Craig to explain what happened in the Minnesota airport when he was arrested as part of an undercover police sting investigation of alleged illicit sex in bathrooms at the airport. Some called on him to resign.

Craig’s office said he has scheduled a 4:30 p.m. EDT appearance in Boise to make a statement about the incident, without taking questions.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit watchdog group, requested a formal investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee of Craig’s misdemeanor guilty plea and his conduct at the airport.

A conservative activist, Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, said she was considering calling for Craig’s resignation. “If what the police allege is true, he should resign. No one ­— Democrat or Republican — should get a pass on charges like this,” said Lafferty.

Craig has denied he was trying to proposition an undercover airport police investigator from an adjacent men’s room stall, as alleged in a police incident report. In a written statement, Craig called his decision to plead guilty to disorderly conduct a mistake.

The police report by Sgt. Dave Karnia described being in a bathroom stall and seeing Craig peer through a crack, “‘fidget’ with his fingers” and make a series of motions with his foot that he interpreted as a proposition.

“At 12:16 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct,” Karnia wrote. “Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. . . . The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” Karsnia wrote.

“At 12:17 hours, I saw Craig swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds. The swipe went in the direction from the front (door side) of the stall back towards the back wall. His palm was facing towards the ceiling as he guided it,” the report continued.

According to Karnia’s report, Craig denied he was trying to proposition the officer and maintained that he used “a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine” and asserted that he “reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.”

Craig has said for weeks that he intends to announce his political plans in September.

Supporters of Craig rallied around him.

“He’s in the fight of his life. It’s way too premature to say he’s not going to survive it,” said Gregory S. Casey, a former top aide to Craig who is now president and chief executive officer of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, a bipartisan, pro-business advocacy group backed by large trade groups and businesses.

Casey said he believed it was possible that Craig would choose to run for re-election.

“I think there will be a lot of pressure on Craig to retire so they can hold onto that seat. They certainly are going to try and hold as many seats as they can, and wouldn’t want to risk losing one that they should hold,” said Gary Jacobson, political science professor at the University of California, San Diego.

In Idaho, Craig’s allies seemed to be in shock.

Sen. Jim McClure, R-Idaho (1973-1991), said the misdemeanor conviction and a possible ethics probe would damage Craig, but said the ultimate impact would depend on Idaho voters and what Craig says when he announces his political plans in coming days. “We’ll have to wait and see what he decides to do,” McClure said.

Stan Brand, a longtime ethics lawyer in Washington, said that it was unclear how far the Senate ethics committee would go either taking up the CREW ethics complaint, or pursuing a reprimand of Craig, because the disorderly conduct charge did not directly involve Craig’s handling of Senate duties.

The ethics panel has defined its own mission as enforcing standards of conduct, as well as punishing improper conduct that reflects badly on the Senate as an institution.

The Senate’s ethics manual says the Ethics Committee should take action against “improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate” whether or not it involves the violation of a law. But the manual gives panel members broad discretion in defining improper conduct and in deciding whether and how to punish it.

“Both ethics committees in the House and Senate recognizes a line between personal conduct and official conduct,” said ethics attorney Stanley Brand. “This case doesn’t seem to implicate any of his official duties or his use of government resources.”

Jan Baran, a GOP ethics lawyer, said he also regarded the Craig case as unusual and perhaps a tough call for the Ethics Committee. He said the allegations against Craig were not similar to any recent Senate ethics investigations, but did resemble House incident involving former Rep. Bob Bauman, R-Md., (1973-1981), who lost a race for re-election in 1980, just a month after being arrested for trying to solicit sex from a 16-year-old boy. Bauman later wrote a book, “The Gentleman from Maryland,” about his dual identity as a married family man and a homosexual.

A senior member of the GOP caucus, Craig has a broad network of former aides in Washington, including Candida Wolff, the chief lobbyist for President Bush.

Craig has been expected to play a key role on the Senate floor debate in September of a spending bill (HR 2642) that funds military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs. As ranking Republican on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Craig has been critical of some increases in funding, but has nonetheless been regarded as a staunch supporter of the military and of veterans.

If Craig elects to retire, his post as ranking member could fall to Richard Burr of North Carolina, the panel’s third-ranking Republican after Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is the ranking member on Judiciary.

A spokesman for the Ethics Committee declined to comment on any possible probe.