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Politics

Republican pressure grows against senator

Two GOP senators call on Craig to resign as he loses committee spots.

By Washington Post
Published August 30, 2007

BOISE, Idaho - Sen. Larry Craig went on vacation Wednesday with his wife, according to aides, as calls for his resignation intensified, Republican leaders stripped him of his committee assignments and support at home appeared to be eroding.

On the day after Craig dismissed his guilty plea on charges of disorderly conduct in an airport restroom as an overreaction to a mistaken arrest and insisted that he is not gay, two Republican senators said that Craig should resign. Craig said Tuesday that he had committed no wrongdoing and shouldn't have pleaded guilty.

"My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., agreed, and announced that he will give to a charity $2,500 in campaign funds his office had received from Craig.

Senate GOP leaders said that Craig agreed to comply with leadership's request that he step down as the ranking Republican on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and two subcommittees while the ethics committee assesses his case. The move, they said, was for "the good of the Senate."

The intensity of the Republican leaders' assault on one of their own was stunning.

Several ethics lawyers and experts could not provide a single example of one senator calling for the ethics committee to investigate a colleague in the past two decades.

A White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, expressed disappointment and said he hopes that the ethics committee will work swiftly.

For the most part, Democrats studiously avoided involvement.

Idaho voters have three times elected Craig in a landslide. But in the Boise area Wednesday, supporters were suddenly difficult to find.

In the hours after Craig's defiant statement Tuesday, CBS affiliate KIVI-TV solicited viewers' on its Web site. By the early news it had not received a single expression of support.

Craig was arrested on June 11 in the Minneapolis airport men's room after an undercover officer observed conduct that he said was "often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct."

Craig pleaded guilty this month to disorderly conduct and signed papers that included a notation that the court would not accept a guilty plea from anyone claiming to be innocent. Craig said Tuesday that he was "not involved in any inappropriate conduct" and that he "plead guilty to a lesser charge in hopes of making it go away."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified August 30, 2007, 02:00:35]