A senior
Republican senator is considering resigning, party officials
said Friday, after days of public and private pressure
stemming from his arrest in June in a police
undercover operation at an airport men's room.
Sen. Larry Craig
pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on August 1, and
while he has since said he did nothing wrong, the episode
has roiled the Republican Party and produced numerous
calls for him to step down.
Republicans lost
control of Congress in last November's elections, partly
due to scandals, and are trying to regroup in preparation
for the next round of voting, this time with the
presidency at stake, in late 2008. Many conservatives,
a significant base in the party, oppose gay rights.
As a measure of
the pressure Craig faces, party officials said a
statement had been drafted at Republican Party headquarters
calling for the third-term senator to resign. It was
not issued, these officials said, in response to
concerns that it might complicate quiet efforts under
way to persuade the 62-year-old lawmaker to give up his
seat.
Any resignation
would clear the way for C.L. ''Butch'' Otter, the
Republican governor of the conservative western state of
Idaho that Craig represents, to name a replacement who
would serve until the end of Craig's current term in
2009. This would maintain the current balance between
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, according to party
officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Democrats control the Senate 51-49 including
two independents who usually vote with them.
Craig has not
made any public statements about his case since an
appearance earlier this week in Boise, in which he said he
had done nothing wrong. ''I am not gay. I never have
been gay,'' he added emphatically.
He said any
additional comment would be posted on his official Web site,
where the only reference to the incident as of Friday
morning was a text of the statement he read before the
television cameras.
Craig, 62, served
in the House before winning his first Senate term in
1990 and compiled a strongly conservative voting record.
He was arrested
on June 11 by an undercover police officer in a
Minneapolis airport men's room who said the senator had
engaged in conduct ''often used by persons
communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct.''
Minutes after he
was arrested for lewd conduct, Craig denied soliciting
for sex, saying ''I'm not gay. I don't do these kinds of
things,'' according to an audio tape released by
police on Thursday.
He denied that he
had used foot and hand gestures to signal interest in a
sexual encounter. The officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, accused
the three-term senator of lying and grew exasperated
with his denials.
''Embarrassing,
embarrassing. No wonder why we're going down the tubes,''
Karsnia said.
In the police
interview, Craig, 62, never admitted doing anything wrong
and said his actions had been misinterpreted. However,
Karsnia wrote in his report that the gestures were
consistent with efforts to find a sexual partner in
the men's room.
Craig later
pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct,
which he now calls a mistake.
More Republicans
distanced themselves from Craig on Thursday. Sen. John
Ensign, who chairs the Republicans' senatorial campaign
committee, which provides finances and other political
necessities to candidates, stopped short of calling on
him to resign but suggested strongly that he should.
''I wouldn't put
myself, hopefully, in that kind of position, but if I
was in a position like that, that's what I would do,''
Ensign told the Associated Press. ''He's going to have
to answer that for himself.''
The party's
Senate leadership had previously called for the Ethics
Committee to investigate and on Wednesday took the highly
unusual measure of asking him to give up his seniority
in committee positions. Craig complied. (David Espo,
AP)
