NYT : Craig Goes on Offensive, Angering G.O.P. Leaders

Craig Goes on Offensive, Angering G.O.P. Leaders

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and DUFF WILSON | September 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho on Wednesday took new steps to clear his name in Washington and in Minnesota, where he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after being arrested in a sex sting. Mr. Craig’s efforts, including the suggestion that he might not resign at the end of the month as he had announced, infuriated Republican Senate leaders who thought they had contained the political damage from his case.

In a sign of how quickly his colleagues have turned against him, the Senate Ethics Committee on Wednesday swiftly rejected a request by Mr. Craig’s lawyers to dismiss the complaints against him, and Republican leaders moved to fill his leadership positions on three committees.

Mr. Craig, through a lawyer, said that he would try to have his guilty plea withdrawn in Minnesota and that if he could do so by the end of the month he might remain in office.

But a close friend and confidant of Mr. Craig, his former chief of staff, Gregory S. Casey, said that the senator was far more concerned about clearing his name and restoring his reputation than staying in office for the remaining 16 months of his term.

“What he is trying to do is to get the maximum leverage to clear his name for himself and his family, as a human being, and that’s the plan he has,” Mr. Casey said after speaking with Mr. Craig on Wednesday.

“I think it’s relatively simple, but looks a lot more complicated,” said Mr. Casey, who spent part of last week with Mr. Craig in Idaho. “I mean, here’s a man whose focus now is on attempting to do the best he can about clearing his name. Not to hold on to his job as a senator — that’s not what this is about.”

“He’s attempting to balance that with being run out of town on a rail,” Mr. Casey added. “He knows he can never be back to where he was before this scandal broke. He knows he made a mistake by pleading guilty.”

Politically and legally, Mr. Craig faces uphill battles. “Pending Senator Craig’s resignation, the committee will continue to review this matter,” Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, the leaders of the Ethics Committee, wrote in a letter to Senate Republicans.

Legal experts said vacating Mr. Craig guilty plea would be tough, but not impossible.

But even if he is vindicated, several of Mr. Craig’s Republican colleagues, while speaking in the Senate’s customarily decorous tones, made clear that they would not welcome his return. “Any reconsideration would be a mistake,” said Senator Robert F. Bennett of Utah. “Once you announce you are resigning, you don’t take it back.”

Mr. Craig, in Boise on Saturday, said he intended to resign on Sept. 30 because he could not pursue his legal options while representing the people of Idaho. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after an undercover police officer accused him of soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room.

But with powerful lawyers now defending him in Minneapolis and in Washington, it is clear that Mr. Craig intends to wage a fierce fight, if not to salvage his political career — re-election seems out of the question — then to defend his honor and that of his family, which has stood by him.

Mr. Craig has insisted that he is not gay — to a Boise newspaper in an interview this spring before the airport incident and again to the police officer who arrested him. “I’m not gay; I don’t do these kinds of things,” he told the officer. He repeated the denial in statements to his family after his arrest became public.

At the end of June, Mr. Craig’s campaign committee reported having more than $549,000 on hand, which could be spent on his legal battles.

The announcement that he was reconsidering his resignation was the latest in a series of conflicting statements that have perplexed even some of his closest political supporters.

Mr. Craig met on Wednesday with Gov. C. L. Otter of Idaho, and an aide to the governor said the conversation had centered on the senator’s resignation and the governor’s naming of his successor.

“We are working toward a replacement," the governor’s spokesman, Jon Hanian, said after the meeting. “We are working with the senator’s staff toward what we assume is a Sept. 30 date. What Larry has got going on outside of that, you’re going to have to talk to Larry about, but we are proceeding based on what he said at his Saturday event.”

Mr. Craig’s lawyers in Washington, Stanley M. Brand and Andrew D. Herman of the Brand Group, wrote to the Ethics Committee saying there was no precedent for it to investigate “purely personal conduct unrelated to the performance of official Senate duties.”

But in its letter to Republicans, the Ethics Committee said it clearly had authority to investigate, and according to the Senate ethics manual “may discipline a member for any misconduct, including conduct or activity which does not directly relate to official duties, when such conduct unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole.”

Mr. Craig responded in a statement that the committee had not addressed his lawyers’ points. "It is my intent to fight the case before the Ethics Committee while I am a sitting senator," he said. "I would prefer to have that case resolved on its merits."

At the Capitol, Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, said a legal victory might prove hollow. “I fear for him, the response of the court of public opinion,” Mr. Smith said. “If this story doesn’t get smaller, it gets bigger.”

And Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, told reporters Wednesday that Mr. Craig had called to update him about his plans.

“My view remains what I said last Saturday,” Mr. McConnell said. “I thought he made the correct decision, the difficult but correct decision to resign. That would still be my view today.”

Mr. McConnell, growing weary of repeated questions about Mr. Craig, asked: “Anything on any other subject? I really have covered this.” And then, to his noticeable relief, came a question about the war in Iraq.

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Washington, and Duff Wilson from New York. Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington, and William Yardley from Seattle.