Jim Camden: Craig on the job while ‘deeply panicked’
Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s chance to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct, and with it to avoid resigning from the Senate, may hinge on whether a judge believes he was so “deeply panicked” that he made a serious mistake: pleaded guilty to something he didn’t do, not understanding what would happen because he didn’t consult a lawyer.
According to documents filed this week in Minneapolis, this panic started when he was arrested as part of an undercover vice sting in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport restroom and questioned by the arresting detective on June 11, and continued until he signed and mailed in his plea bargain agreement on Aug. 1.
The court can apparently infer that the panic lasted the entire period because he never called an attorney to discuss what he could or should do to get a speedy resolution to a charge for a crime he insists he didn’t commit.
Not calling an attorney may raise eyebrows in some quarters, considering he spent much of that time in Washington, D.C. – a place where one cannot swing a dead cat without hitting at least two lawyers and provoking three tort claims – unless one realizes that he apparently didn’t tell anyone. Not his colleagues or his staff or his political allies. Not even his family.
Now he has lawyers – not just one but a whole team of big gun defense attorneys – who suggest he wasn’t able to understand all the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty to the lesser of two charges and getting the more serious one dropped.
“Sen. Craig is not a lawyer, and like any other non-lawyer, should not be expected to understand the intricacies of constitutional law,” they argued.
Ordinarily, this assertion might not sit well with Craig, who for the last quarter century has been convinced that he understands the intricacies of the Constitution well enough to try changing it with a balanced budget amendment. But desperate times call for special measures.
Aside from not calling a lawyer to ask if he was doing something stupid, however, were there any other indications that he was panicked? He’s not giving interviews, but one can check the record.
While in this deeply panicked mode, Craig had to keep being a senator. Apparently he wasn’t thrown so off-kilter that he did something bizarre like, say, vote in lock-step with Ted Kennedy. He cast 85 recorded votes, including one just hours after the incident in the restroom and the “aggressive interrogation” by the undercover police detective his lawyers say contributed to this deep panic.
He was not so deeply affected that he did something out of character that evening. He voted against ending a filibuster that was blocking a resolution of no-confidence against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The cloture vote failed, as Craig and most other Republicans wanted, and Gonzales remained in office, albeit temporarily.
The Senate then moved on to the Energy Act, where he generally voted with Republicans on GOP-sponsored amendments and against Democrat sponsored amendments on topics like renewable energy, off-shore drilling and the like. He eventually voted yes on the Energy Bill, like 20 other Republicans, including Idaho’s Mike Crapo.
The Senate spent a few days on immigration reform, which was also threatened with a filibuster. Craig voted to cut off the filibuster, which was not a GOP position, but might be less a result of deep panic and more the fact that he’s been pushing immigration reform. When negotiations over the reforms went south, Craig voted again to cut off the filibuster, and when that cloture vote failed – essentially killing the bill – he issued a press release that said it was still an important issue that needed to be addressed.
He voted to confirm federal judges in Michigan, Virginia, New York and Washington.
His position on Iraq remained consistent: He voted with 93 other senators on a resolution that Iraq “should not become a haven for terrorists” and against reducing military forces in Iraq. He voted for the Homeland Security Appropriations Act.
By the end of July, the Senate was voting on the Children’s Health Insurance Program and various tax incentives for small business, where again he tended to vote with Republicans on their motions and against Democrats on their motions. He voted against the bill, but it passed.
Throughout the period, Craig also issued a series of press releases – 32 total, or slightly more than the same period in 2006. Many discussed votes he took and the reasons he took them. He noted that the transportation spending bill would have $14 million for Idaho, but he thought it was too expensive overall. He reported the feds would spend $500,000 to fight potato cyst nematodes, Boise would get $3 million to help pay for the 2009 Special Olympics. He did say he had “deep concern” – which is a few code colors below deeply panicked – about spending levels in homeland security and military construction bills.
He talked about celebrating Flag Day at the Washington Monument, and voting to establish the National Day of the American Cowboy. He said nice things about Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson who was resigning. He wrote a letter with the rest of the Idaho delegation asking for more federal help with wildfires raging in the state.
All this seems pretty standard fare for Craig or any senator. So the question a judge may have to ponder is, how did he contain the panic to just one aspect of his life, and go about the rest of it as “business as usual”?