Aug. 28, 2007 – Updated 5:04 p.m.
Moving swiftly to get ahead of bad news for one of their own, Senate Republican leaders Tuesday said they will ask the Ethics Committee to open a file on Sen.
The leaders issued a joint statement reacting to news of Craig’s guilty plea earlier this month to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
“Due to the reported and disputed circumstances, and the legal resolution of this serious case, we will recommend that Senator Craig’s incident be reported to the Senate Ethics Committee for its review,” the brief written statement said. “In the meantime, leadership is examining other aspects of the case to determine if additional action is required.”
The statement was issued by GOP Leader
The three-term Idaho Republican had been arrested in June as part of an undercover police sting investigation of alleged illicit sex in airport bathrooms.
He kept the arrest a secret for months.
On Tuesday, he appeared before television cameras in Boise and declared that the only mistake he made was in trying to deal with the arrest by himself, without the advice of friends, family or a lawyer.
“I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport,” he said. “I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct ... I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away.”
“I am not gay, I never have been gay,” the senator said, blaming his guilty plea on a lapse in judgment fueled by the knowledge that a newspaper was conducting extensive interviews to determine the truthfulness of allegations of homosexual conduct made by a blogger.
“In pleading guilty, I overreacted in Minneapolis because of the stress of the
Craig — who already has entered a guilty plea, been fined and placed on probation for the misdemeanor charge — added that he now has retained a lawyer and will ask the lawyer to advise him on how to proceed with the case.
He also said he will announce next month whether he is running for another term.
Several hours before Craig spoke publicly and his leaders issued their joint statement, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit watchdog group, also requested a formal ethics investigation.
Several prominent moral conservatives suggested Craig consider stepping down.
“If the senator did indeed engage in the behavior to which he pled guilty, then the appropriate thing for him to do is to resign from office. Character is an essential qualification for public service, and the essence of character is what you do when you do not think anyone is looking,” said Bryan Fischer, executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance.
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 A-— 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.
The police report by Sgt. Dave Karsnia 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,” Karsnia 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 Karsnia’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. On Tuesday, he said he will stick to that schedule.
“There are still goals I would like to accomplish, and I believe I can still be an effective leader for Idaho,” he said.
Supporters of Craig rallied around him, though many seemed to be in shock.
“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 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.
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 it was unclear how far the Senate ethics committee would go, 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 (
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
A spokesman for the Ethics Committee declined to comment on any possible probe.
Bart Jansen and Patrick Yoest contributed to this story.
First posted Aug. 28, 2007 3:05 p.m.