Oct 12, 2007  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

He faces an ethics investigation and will likely be shunned by peers, but Sen. Larry Craig could retain his seat through it all.

Political experts said Craig, the Idaho Republican who last week vowed to serve the remaining 15 months of his term despite a court ruling that left intact his guilty plea in connection with a sex sting operation, is unlikely to receive anything beyond a reprimand.

“Whether he finishes his term is largely up to him,” said Mark Rozell, a George Mason University public policy professor. “It would be an extraordinary action if he were to be removed from his seat in the Senate.”

Craig, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after being accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom, faces review by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics.

A complaint filed by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington cites a clause that allows the committee to investigate senators whose “improper conduct may reflect upon the Senate.”

But Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor, said that investigation is likely to end quickly and behind closed doors.

“Really, no one gains if they have hearings,” he said. “And there’s really nothing I think they can do.”

Wilcox said the committee could investigate unconfirmed reports by Craig’s hometown newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, that the senator had oral sex in the men’s room at Washington’s Union Station.

“But they don’t have him for that,” Wilcox said. “They don’t have him for sex in a public place — they have him for signaling.”

Rozell said Craig’s misdemeanor conviction has been “hugely blown out of proportion” and is nothing to pique the ethics committee’s interest.

“We’re talking about private behavior,” he said. “This was not something that happened in the context of his duties as a United States senator.”

Barring some unforeseen revelation, experts said, Craig is likely to escape with nothing worse than a reprimand.

But Lara Brown, a political science professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, said that’s more than enough to make Craig a burden to the Republican Party.

“Next year is already shaping up to be an extraordinarily challenging election for Republicans,” she said. “The last thing they need is another highly public scandal.”

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who chairs the GOP campaign committee overseeing the 2008 Senate elections, has called Craig embarrassing and distracting to Republicans. He is among those who have called on Craig to resign.

“They want him to go away so badly,” Wilcox said. “They were just hoping he would quit.”

Six weeks ago, Craig announced his intent to resign Sept. 30 if he could not have his guilty plea rescinded. But he reneged on the pledge Oct. 4, vowing instead to not seek a fourth Senate term.

Brown said Craig has no motivation to prematurely end a congressional career that began in 1980.

“I guess the answer is, why would he?” she said. “What’s in it for him? I mean, why would he? Really. So he can go gracefully into retirement?”

Wilcox said Craig, who got zeroes on the last three Human Rights Campaign scorecards, is now widely seen as a hypocrite, but that alone doesn’t doom him.

“The hypocrisy side of it is big, but is there really news in hypocrites in Congress?” he said. “Is anyone really surprised by that revelation?”

Wilcox said the larger problem before Craig is that his Senate colleagues have marginalized him.

“There’s very little he can accomplish in the remainder of his term,” Wilcox said. “He’s kind of a laughingstock, so he’s not going to be very effective.”

In a statement last week, Craig said it is possible for him to remain effective in Congress. Rozell disagreed.

“He has one vote on the floor of the Senate, just like everyone else, until the day he leaves,” he said. “But in terms of sponsoring legislation or being a power broker within the institution, I think that’s gone.

“His Republican colleagues have made it very clear they’re going to shun him, and they’re going to do everything they can to make him irrelevant.”