Craig having second thoughts

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Sen. Larry E. Craig, Idaho Republican, 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 last night.

“It’s not such a foregone conclusion any more, that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Mr. Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told the Associated Press.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator 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,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Craig announced Saturday that he intended to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

Mr. Craig was a no-show yesterday as Congress reconvened after a summer break, and it wasn’t clear whether he’ll return at all since deciding to resign over his guilty plea in a sex sting this summer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Another spokesman, Dan Whiting in Washington, said yesterday that Mr. Craig likely would spend the week in Idaho. He did not rule out his boss returning to Washington before the end of the month.

A telephone call Mr. Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, urging him to consider fighting for his seat is affecting Mr. Craig’s decision to reconsider his resignation, Mr. Smith said.

Yesterday, Mr. Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor, suggested Mr. Craig’s Republican colleagues who pressured him last week to resign should re-examine the facts surrounding his arrest June 11.

“The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” Mr. Specter said. If Craig had not pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” the Pennsylvania lawmaker said.

Billy Martin, one of Mr. Craig’s attorneys, said the senator’s arrest in an undercover police operation in the Minneapolis airport “raises very serious constitutional questions” and that Mr. Craig “has the right to pursue any and all legal remedies available as he begins the process of trying to clear his good name.”

Mr. Craig has said he had done nothing wrong and his only mistake was pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge