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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Larry Craig, Idaho's senior senator, was first elected to the House in 1980 and to the Senate in 1990. Born on a ranch homesteaded by his grandfather in 1899, he was first elected to the state Senate in 1974, at 29, and served six years before running for the U.S. House. In 1990, when Senator James McClure retired, he was elected to the Senate; he won the Republican primary with 59% of the vote and the general election with 61%. In his early years in Congress, Craig was a well-informed and persistent critic of Western lands policies favored by environmentalists or, as he once put it, ''environmental extremism.'' He opposed Bill Clinton's efforts to revise the Mining Act of 1872 and increase grazing fees and the Clinton proposal to introduce grizzly bears into Idaho's Bitterroot Range. He opposed expansion of the Craters of the Moon National Monument, and sponsored a bill to create certain requirements for presidents to declare national monuments, as Clinton frequently did. He also opposed breaching the Snake River dams to allow salmon to swim more easily upstream and sponsored a bill to require the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider many factors, including the effect on farming, when it makes decisions on salmon protection programs. As chairman of the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee Craig worked to change the policies and institutional culture of the Forest Service. In the 1990s it reduced by nearly 80% the timber harvest on public lands, and in the process eliminated the livelihoods of many in small towns in Idaho and the West. While attacking Clinton policies publicly, he also worked behind the scenes with Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden to come up with a bipartisan alternative. In the wake of the summer 2000 wildfires that raged in Idaho, he strongly criticized the Clinton administration for failing to fund fire prevention and called for $240 million for federal agencies to remove timber and brush. He sponsored a reorganization bill to streamline planning procedures, limit court challenges to local people who commented during the planning process, and forbid deviations from the plan once adopted. It would allow states and private organizations, with congressional approval, to take over management of National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. He opposed the Clinton regulation to ban construction of roads in national forests and supported the Bush administration's attempts to repeal it. He also backed the Bush administration's 2002 proposal to give regional managers power to approve commercial or recreational use without protracted environmental impact statements and the Bush Healthy Forest Initiative streamlining approval of forest thinning. Over the years he has moved from provoking controversy to forging consensus. "There are a lot of people who would like to cast me in comments that I've made over the years, and made 10 or 15 years ago. What I suggest is that they see the actions I've taken over the last decade, actions that I think have been extremely progressive, open and inclusive." Once an opponent of new wilderness area designations, he agreed in November 2004 to support the Boulder-White Clouds wilderness area sponsored by 2d District Congressman Mike Simpson and the Owyhee Canyonlands wilderness proposal, worked out after lengthy negotiations with his Senate colleague Mike Crapo, the Owyhee County commissioners, local landowners, in-state environmentalists and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. Another Craig cause is nuclear waste. He has been pushing relentlessly for the government to meet its commitment to establish a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Opposition came from Nevada's two senators and from Bill Clinton, who carried Nevada twice by narrow margins after promising to veto bills to establish a temporary waste facility there. In July 2002, Craig's efforts came to fruition: George W. Bush signed a resolution establishing the repository. In March 2002 he inserted into the energy bill a Nuclear Power 2010 program for the Energy Department, and in March 2003 he got Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici to insert into the energy bill a $1.2 billion nuclear reactor for the INEEL laboratory in Butte County. And he worked to get compensation for downwinders, residents of four Idaho counties subjected to radiation from above-ground nuclear weapons tests in Nevada in the 1950s. Craig has taken on a variety of national issues. He was a lead sponsor of the constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget in the House in 1982 and in the Senate in 1995. He has supported free trade measures but he co-sponsored a May 2002 amendment with Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton to trade promotion authority which would have allowed Congress to separately examine provisions of any trade agreement that affect trade remedy laws; that passed 61-38 but was dropped in conference committee after Bush threatened a veto. Craig has opposed what he considers dumping of Korean microchips (Micron is Idaho's biggest employer) and Canadian softwood lumber. He opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement because it would allow more sugar imports and insisted that sugar should be considered only in the Doha Round, not in regional trade agreements. In 2004 he sponsored with Dayton a bill imposing tariffs on milk protein concentrates. Craig has supported opening up trade with Cuba, once a big purchaser of Idaho lentils and peas, and in February 2004, he and 1st District Congressman Butch Otter visited Cuba. He opposed the Bush administration proposal to require payment in advance for Cuban purchases. Craig was chairman of the Special Committee on Aging in 2003 and 2004, and sponsored a bill with Evan Bayh of Indiana to enable seniors to purchase state-approved long-term care policies. He warned that he might support federal regulation of assisted living facilities if state regulation proved ineffective. In January 2005 he became chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee. In the gun control debate after the 1999 Columbine murders, he sponsored a bill to allow (but not force) unlicensed sellers at gun shows to conduct background checks. In July 2002 he, John McCain, Edward Kennedy and Charles Schumer were an "odd duck" coalition sponsoring a bill to improve the National Instant Check background check system; they want to make sure that it includes all those convicted of crimes or otherwise ineligible to buy guns. In March 2004 he sponsored the bill to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits seeking money for injuries committed by gun users. It seemed to have a majority, but when liberals attached to it a reauthorization of the assault weapons ban, he successfully killed the whole measure; he was pleased when the assault weapons ban expired in September 2004. That same year he sponsored a bill, backed by liberals and conservatives, to repeal or limit portions of the USA PATRIOT Act. Craig has used his seat on the Appropriations Committee to advance Idaho projects. In November 2004 he attached to the omnibus bill the agreement worked out by the Interior Department, Governor Dirk Kempthorne and the Nez Perce tribe settling water claims on the Snake River. He obtained funding for a new tower at Boise's airport and $245,000 for an aging study and $900,000 for a Center for Environmental Science and Economic Development at Boise State University. In the 1990s Craig was chairman of an informal committee whose members seemed to win most leadership positions. After Senator Bob Dole's resignation in June 1996, Craig was elected chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, the number four leadership position. In December 2000 Craig was challenged for this position by the more senior and more conciliation-minded Pete Domenici, and Craig just barely hung on, 26-24. Term limits prevented him from running again in 2002. He considered running for whip in the fall, but evidently became convinced that Mitch McConnell had the votes and did not run. Winning reelection is ordinarily not difficult for an Idaho Republican, but Craig has had to run twice against Democrats who largely self-financed their campaigns. In 1996 building materials tycoon Walt Minnick spent $945,000 of his own money and attacked Craig sharply for backing Governor Phil Batt's nuclear waste compact. Craig responded by rafting down the river with his family and running ads predicting toxic desolation if the nuclear waste compact was not carried out. Craig won 57%-40%. In 2002 retired investment banker Alan Blinken, owner of a Sun Valley house who registered to vote there in 2001, spent $1.5 million of his own money on the campaign. Blinken had points against him: he had been Clinton's ambassador to Belgium and had lived for many years in New York City. But he boasted that he owned eight pistols, eight rifles and eight shotguns, "and I use them all. I'm a gun-totin' Idaho Democrat." Blinken said he could bring "good paying" jobs to Idaho and attacked Craig for voting in favor of certain interests shortly after receiving campaign contributions from them. Craig defended his votes as being in line with long-held principles and on many issues said that Blinken's stands showed he doesn't understand life in Idaho. Craig spent more than $3 million and Idaho did not drift far from its usual voting habits. Craig won 65%-33%; he carried 43 counties and Blinken carried the county that includes Sun Valley. He drew mention as a possible Cabinet appointee in November 2004, but he wasn't asked and is considered likely to run for a fourth term in 2008.
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