Boise, Idaho – Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.
“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman, said in Idaho’s capital. “We’re still preparing as if Sen. Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight – and stay in the Senate.”
Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he has hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his court plea, his spokesman said.
Craig was a no-show Tuesday as Congress reconvened after a summer break, and it wasn’t clear whether he would return at all since deciding to resign over his guilty plea in a sex sting this summer at the Minneapolis airport.
A call Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urging him to consider fighting for his seat is affecting Craig’s decision to reconsider his resignation, Smith said.
On Tuesday, Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that Craig’s GOP colleagues who pressured him into resigning should re-examine the facts surrounding Craig’s arrest June 11 for lewd behavior in a men’s room at the airport.
“The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” said Specter, a former prosecutor.
If Craig had not pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” Specter said.
Craig gave up his senior positions on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Appropriations veterans subcommittee last week at the request of Senate Republican leaders.
The Senate began debating the veterans spending bill Tuesday.
Craig contended throughout last week that he had done nothing wrong and said his only mistake was pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge.
