The Idaho Statesman was investigating allegations surrounding Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) sex life before the scandal broke in earnest in August, and the paper never stopped. Today, The Statesman runs a report documenting four gay men, all of whom have gone on the record, who say “they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.”
David Phillips is a 42-year-old information technology consultant in Washington, D.C., who says Craig picked him up at a gay club in 1986 and that they subsequently had sex.
Mike Jones is a former prostitute who told the world he had sex with the Rev. Ted Haggard last year. The former Colorado Springs evangelist at first denied it but eventually confessed. Jones says Craig paid him for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.
Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d’Alene.
Tom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Bogus Basin in the early 1980s.
A fifth gay man, who is from Boise but who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, offered a recent and telling account: He was in a men’s restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider. Alarmed, the man said he waited outside the restroom and then identified the man in the adjoining stall as Craig, whom he had met in Idaho.
All, apparently, are willing to come forward now because they’ve heard Craig repeatedly insist, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.” They know the claim false, and they want to set the record straight.
The next question, I suppose, is what Senate Republicans are prepared to do about all of this. My hunch is, not much.
Can the party force Craig to resign? Apparently not. They’ve made him as miserable as they can, but he’s not going anywhere.
Can the Senate expel him? In theory, yes, but Dems aren’t interested, and proponents have nowhere near the number of votes they need to pull it off. Five more witnesses that Craig is gay probably won’t change that.
Can the Senate Ethics Committee make his life a living hell? Maybe, but it’s unlikely. There were threats the caucus would use this as leverage to force Craig’s ouster, but the embattled senator quickly realized it was an elaborate bluff — Senate Republicans are even less interested in dragging this out and creating a public spectacle than he is.
Can they censure Craig? There was some talk about that several weeks ago. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said, “Whether … he’ll be expelled or not for that crime, I think there’s a good chance of censureship [sic].” Since then, the idea has completely vanished. And even if it makes a comeback, a censure is a symbolic condemnation; it wouldn’t change anything substantive.
The reality is there’s probably very little the Senate Republican caucus can do about Craig, his scandal, or the new revelations, but it’s certainly a painful coda for a humiliated senator who had hoped to avoid these kinds of headlines.