Congressional Sex Scandals
Speculation and Rumor
As in the case of Mark Foley, there had been speculation and rumors surrounding Craig's sexuality from his earliest days in Congress. Certainly his embarrassing rookie mistake in the Williams page scandal fueled the gossip. For decades, however, the speculation about Craig remained only that. But in October 2006, set off in part by the Foley affair, a Colorado-based gay blogger named Mike Rogers published a story citing anonymous sources who claimed that Larry Craig had sex with men. One man said he'd allegedly engaged in oral sex with Craig in the bathroom at Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Rogers' work, which didn't seek a response from Craig, was picked up by the web site Wonkette, the Washington Post, USA Today and MSNBC, among other media outlets. It's unclear if Craig ever addressed the issue at that time. The Senator did sit down with the biggest newspaper in his home state, the Idaho Statesman, in May 2007 after the paper had conducted a thorough investigation that was sparked by Roger's initial report. In that interview, Craig insisted he was not gay and rejected the paper's reporting, including an audiotape of one of the men.
ment to the press.
"The gay movement, we know it for what it is. It's now aggressive and it's liberal and it's naming people to try to put them in compromising, difficult situations," Craig told the newspaper. Craig's wife Suzanne sat at his side during the interview, which included playing the audiotapes.
"I'm incensed that you would even consider such a piece of trash as a credible source," she told the newspaper.
"Jiminy God!" Craig said.
After conducting 300 interviews and traveling to Washington, D.C., the reporters and editors at the Statesman decided they didn't have enough credible information and could only rely on anonymous or uncorroborated sources, and therefore never published their findings.
That would all change three months later, after Craig's arrest and guilty plea in the Minneapolis bathroom sting was revealed by the Washington, D.C. newspaper Roll Call.