N.C. senator gets Craig role on panel

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was replaced by a North Carolina senator, at least temporarily, as ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Tuesday, and Craig’s hearing on his bid to withdraw his guilty plea in a Minnesota sex solicitation case was set for Sept. 26.

That date is just four days before Craig has said he’ll resign from the Senate if he hasn’t been able to clear his name.

The two developments Tuesday drove home the tenuous status of Craig’s 27-year career in Congress. He already has said he won’t seek election to a fourth Senate term.

After Craig was snared in an undercover lewd conduct investigation in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport men’s room in June, he signed a plea agreement admitting misdemeanor disorderly conduct Aug. 1. He’s now attempting to withdraw that plea and fight the charge, denying any wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, under intense pressure from the Senate Republican leadership, Craig announced Sept. 2 that he intended to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. In subsequent days, he said he might not resign if he can clear up both the criminal case and a Senate ethics investigation by that date.

Two days after news of Craig’s arrest and guilty plea surfaced, Senate Republican leaders stripped Craig of his ranking Republican status on three key Senate committees – Veterans Affairs, the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior and the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.

On Tuesday, the Veterans Affairs Committee’s GOP members announced that North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr has been named the ranking Republican on the panel, “temporarily” replacing Craig in that post.

Burr, who served five terms in the House before he was elected to the Senate in 2004, said, “I appreciate the confidence my Senate colleagues have expressed in me today.”

North Carolina is home to more than 750,000 veterans, Burr noted.

Neither of the two subcommittees has yet made a move to name a replacement for Craig as ranking member.

Matt Letourneau, spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the ranking Republican on the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said a series of steps would be required before a new ranking member could be named for Craig’s subcommittee.

Domenici would make that call after consulting with committee members. But some political dominoes could fall if one member chooses to give up a ranking position on another panel to take Craig’s spot, creating another opening.

Letourneau said the committee assignment of a new senator replacing Craig after a resignation also would be part of the mix.

“It isn’t a given that Sen. Craig’s replacement will be assigned to the energy committee, but it’s certainly possible and maybe even likely,” Letourneau said, “so we will wait and see.”

Craig’s hearing in Minnesota was set for 1:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at the Southdale Suburban Courthouse in Edina.

In legal papers filed Monday, Craig’s attorneys argued that the senator pleaded guilty because of his fear and panic about a Boise newspaper’s investigation.