In Idaho, Waiting On Craig

Even Craig's former staffers say it's hard these days to recognize their old boss, who has been dogged by rumors of a secret sex life since he was a freshman in Congress. In 1982, during a scandal involving congressional pages and alleged gay sex and drug abuse on Capitol Hill, Craig took it upon himself to declare his innocence publicly, even though he had not been publicly implicated in the scandal. "It was clear he was going to be strong in his response to those allegations," says Brad Hoaglun, who was a staffer for Craig in 1982, when a network TV crew landed in a helicopter at a ranch where Craig was holding a campaign event—and interviewed him on the spot about the page scandal. Craig addressed the reporters without batting an eye, says Hoaglun, and then went back to campaigning. "To stand up and fight, that's Larry Craig," says Hoaglun of his former boss. "But to hide [news of the arrest]? That's the incongruity that folks are trying to resolve. It's part of that puzzle."

But there is also a residue of support for the man who has served Idaho for more than a quarter of a century. Otter, a tall, cowboyish pol whose appearance is sometimes compared to Ronald Reagan's, knows all too well that it's easy to kick a politician when he's down. In 1992 Otter, then lieutenant governor, was convicted of drunken driving. A night earlier, the press gleefully revealed, he had entered and won a "Mr. Tight Jeans" contest at a Boise Bar. Later that year he and his wife were divorced. Throughout the ordeal Larry Craig stood by him, Otter says. And when Craig announced in early September that would resign from the Senate, after his own conduct had cast a "cloud over Idaho," Otter was right there behind him, one of the few politicians willing to be captured in the same frame. "As a public servant who has made mistakes in my private life, I am mindful that you don't really know who your friends are until you stumble," Otter told the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

This being Idaho, a state George W. Bush carried in 2004 with 68 percent of the vote, there's no question that Craig's seat—should he vacate it, after all—will remain in Republican hands. Otter, who admits to some awkwardness in his relationship with Craig now that he spends a good part of each day interviewing would-be replacements, says he wants to appoint only a candidate who is willing to run for re-election in 2008, when Republicans are desperate not to lose more Senate seats. (A Democrat, former Idaho Congressman Larry LaRocco, has already declared his candidacy, although he's given little chance of winning.) There's also the issue of seniority. Craig's status as ranking member on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, and the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, brought to his sparsely populated state a clout no successor is likely to replicate anytime soon. "There were a couple of key things we were looking for," Otter, a former congressman, told NEWSWEEK. "Who will hold the senator's staff together? I can tell you, from my six short years in D.C., you don't get much done unless you've got a great staff, and Larry had one of the best staffs in Washington, D.C."

One Idahoan who won't be tossing his hat into the ring is State Senate President Bob Geddes, an engineer from eastern Idaho, who says he's waiting to see if Craig will live to fight another day. "I'm not totally convinced that he's going to resign," Geddes said. "If I was going to bet the baby-shoe money, I'd say that he won't. Until there's a vacancy, Sen. Craig is still my senator."

© 2007