Larry Craig Photo: WDCpix

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s mistake wasn’t letting the clock run out on appealing his airport bathroom sex-solicitation case to the Minnesota Supreme Court — it was bringing the wrong case in the first place. That’s the view of Charles Samuelson, executive director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN), who thinks that a refusal to acknowledge his homosexuality impeded Craig’s ability to make his legal arguments.

In an interview with the Minnesota Independent, Samuleson didn’t disagree with Craig attorney Tom Kelly, who said that asking the state’s high court to take the former Idaho senator’s appeal “would have been a futile exercise.”

“[The Supreme Court] can only take what his lawyers bring,” Samuelson said, and Craig had his attorneys bring only “a very small and limited technical issue about his guilty plea.”

But Samuelson said an appeal might have been effective had Craig made civil liberties arguments that the ACLU-MN raised in a friend-of-the-court brief. “Our issues would probably be more attractive to the [state] Supreme Court,” Samuelson said.

The ACLU-MN asserted that Craig’s arrest in a police sting meant to ensnare men seeking gay sex at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men’s room was a classic example of government suppression of unpopular speech.

“The problem is he was reluctant to say he’s a gay man,” Samuelson said, adding that Craig’s recent retirement from office likely lowered the stakes beyond the point at which Craig would press his case, no matter what the issue.

The Metropolitan Airport Commission (MAC), whose police set up the sting and pursued charges against Craig, seems to be in a similar frame of mind. The MAC, which is now fighting hard to extract as many dollars as possible from Delta Air Lines, turned away an apparently serious offer to buy, for $5,000, the bathroom stall where Craig’s alleged foot-tapping sex solicitation took place.

“We would not want to do that to the senator,” MAC spokesperson Patrick Hogan said.