Trent Lott

Chester Trent Lott, Sr. (born October 9, 1941) is a United States Senator from Mississippi and a member of the Republican Party. He previously served as Senate Majority Leader from 1996 to June 6, 2001, interrupted only by a brief period in January 2001, in which he held the position of Senate Minority Leader. After Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to become an independent in June 2001, giving the Democrats control of the Senate, Lott served as Minority Leader until his resignation from that position in December 2002 due to controversial remarks.

On November 15, 2006, he was elected Minority Whip in the Senate, the Republican party's No. 2 leadership position, by a single vote.

Early life

Lott was born in Grenada, Mississippi. His father, Chester Paul Lott, was a shipyard worker; his mother, Iona Watson, was a schoolteacher. He married Patricia Thompson on December 27, 1964. The couple have two children: Chester Trent "Chet" Lott, Jr. and Tyler Lott.

Political biography

Lott attended college at the University of Mississippi where he obtained an undergraduate degree in public administration in 1965 and a law degree in 1967. He served as a Field Representative for Ole Miss and was president of his fraternity, Sigma Nu. After obtaining his law degree, he moved to Pascagoula (where he still lives today) and began a law practice.

Lott was raised as a Democrat. He served as administrative assistant to House Rules Committee chairman William M. Colmer, also of Pascagoula, from 1968 to 1972. When Colmer, one of the leading segregationists in the Democratic Party, retired after 40 years in Congress, he endorsed Lott as his successor in Mississippi's 5th District, located in the state's southwestern tip, even though Lott ran as a Republican. Lott won handily.

Lott's party switch was part of a growing trend in the South. During the 1960s, cracks had begun to appear in the Democrats' "Solid South", as most white segregationists became more willing to vote Republican after the national Democratic Party strongly endorsed racial integration. For example, Barry Goldwater carried Mississippi by winning an unheard-of 87 percent of the popular vote even as he was routed nationally.

It is very likely that Lott would have won even without Colmer's endorsement, as that year's presidential election saw Richard Nixon win reelection in a massive landslide. Nixon won 49 states and 78 percent of Mississippi's popular vote. Lott and his current Senate colleague, Thad Cochran (also elected to Congress that year), were only the second and third Republicans elected to Congress from Mississippi since Reconstruction. In 1974, Lott and Cochran became the first Republicans re-elected to Congress from Mississippi since Reconstruction, in both cases by blowout margins. Lott was re-elected six more times without much difficulty, and even ran unopposed in 1978. He served as House Minority Whip (the second-ranking Republican in the House) from 1981 to 1989; he was the first Southern Republican to hold such a high leadership position.

Lott ran for the Senate in 1988, after 42-year incumbent John Stennis announced he would not run for another term. He defeated Democrat 4th District Congressman Wayne Dowdy by almost eight points, riding the coattails of George H. W. Bush's successful presidential bid. He has never faced another contest nearly that close. He was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006 with no substantive Democratic opposition. He gave some thought to retirement for much of 2005, especially after his house in Pascagoula was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. However, on January 17, 2006 he announced that he would run for a fourth term.

He became Senate Majority Whip when the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1995, succeeding as Majority Leader in 1996 when Bob Dole resigned from the Senate to focus on his presidential campaign. As majority leader, Lott was best known for his role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. After the House narrowly voted to impeach Clinton, it was obvious the Republicans were far short of the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution to convict Clinton and remove him from office. However, Lott proceeded with the Senate trial in early 1999 under pressure from the far right. He later acquiesced in a decision to suspend the proceedings after the Senate voted not to convict President Clinton.

After the 2000 elections produced a 50-50 partisan split, Vice President Al Gore's tiebreaking vote gave the Democrats the majority from January 3-January 20, 2001, when the George W. Bush Administration took office and Vice President Dick Cheney's tiebreaking vote gave the Republicans the majority once again. Later in 2001, he became Senate Minority Leader once again after Jim Jeffords became an independent and caucused with the Democrats, allowing them to regain the majority. He was to become majority leader again in early 2003 after Republican gains in the November 2002 elections. The Strom Thurmond controversy, however (see below), derailed his chances.

Controversy and resignation

Tremendous political controversy ensued following remarks Lott made on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond ran for President of the United States in 1948 on the Dixiecrat (or States' Rights) ticket. Lott said:

"When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either"

Thurmond had explicitly supported racial segregation in the presidential campaign to which Lott referred. Many political commentators inferred that because Lott supported Thurmond's campaign, Lott also supported Thurmond's campaign position of racial segregation. Lott had attracted controversy before in issues relating to civil rights. As a Congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act, voted against the continuation of the Civil Rights Act and opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday. Lott also maintained an affiliation with the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is described as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. According to his uncle, former state Senator Arnie Watson, "Trent is an honorary member" of the CCC, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls "the incarnation of the infamous white Citizens Councils," the white supremacist groups that attempted to resist desegregation. ^[1]

Lott hosted CCC leaders at his Senate office in 1997 and addressed its events at least three times in the 1990s. As a keynote speaker at a 1992 CCC convention, Lott heaped praise on its members: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy… Let's take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries!"

Lott's attempts to explain the remark grew from a mild dismissal as an off-the-cuff remark supporting Thurmond's national defense platform to an explicit repudiation of his past and assertions of support for affirmative action in a BET interview.

Once reported in newspapers and television, calls for his resignation as majority leader from both ends of the political spectrum grew. Some Democrats and Republicans considered the remark inappropriate. Al Gore called the statement "fundamentally racist". Many conservative groups and media were quick to distance themselves from Lott and criticize the incident. Centrist Democrats and Republicans at first defended Lott, insisting the remarks had been blown out of proportion. Some pointed to Sen. Robert Byrd's past as recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan to suggest a double standard, as Byrd was not forced from his leadership position in the Democratic party. Others saw Lott's remarks as simply an attempt to compliment Thurmond on his 100th birthday, devoid of any real meaning beyond the context.

Under pressure from Senate colleagues, and having lost the support of the White House, Lott resigned as Senate Republican Leader on December 20, 2002. Bill Frist of Tennessee was later elected to the leadership position.

Lott was chosen by his colleagues as Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee after the controversy. Some of his critics for the original remarks have noted that this position still carries a great deal of power, and that conservatives and Republicans were mainly using the whole controversy to get rid of a leader they regarded as weak, particularly in the conduct of the Clinton impeachment trial.

In the book Free Culture, Larry Lessig argues that the resignation of Lott would not have occurred had it not been for the effect of Internet blogs. He says that though the story "disappear[ed] from the mainstream press within forty-eight hours", "bloggers kept researching the story" until, "[f]inally, the story broke back into the mainstream press."

Recent developments

Since he lost the Majority Leader post, Lott has kept relatively quiet. However, Lott broke ranks with many conservatives when he said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign within a year. He has also battled with President Bush over military base closures in his home state. Many Capitol Hill observers believe Lott blames the Bush White House, especially GOP political strategist Karl Rove, for the loss of his post as Senate leader.

He has also shown support for passenger rail initiatives, notably, his 2006 bipartisan introduction with Frank Lautenberg, of legislation to provide 80 percent federal matching grants to intercity rail and guarantee adequate funding for Amtrak.^[2] On July 18th, 2006 Senator Lott voted with 19 Republican senators for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act to lift restrictions on federal funding for the research.

Lott has also written a memoir entitled Herding Cats, A Life in Politics. In the book Lott speaks for the first time on the infamous Strom Thurmond birthday party gaffe. He also speaks out on former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and about his feelings of betrayal toward the Tennessee Senator, claiming "If Frist had not announced exactly when he did, as the fire was about to burn out, I would still be majority leader of the Senate today." He also described former Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Democrat of South Dakota) as "trustworthy." He also reveals that President Bush, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other GOP leaders played a major role in ending his career as Senate Republican Leader.

Sen. John E. Sununu of New Hampshire said of Lott recently, "He understands the rules. He's a strong negotiator." Former Representative Newt Gingrich says he's "the smartest legislative politician I've ever met."^[3]

It was reported on January 31, 2007 that Trent Lott will become co-chairperson, along with Senator Tim Johnson, of the bipartisan Taiwan Senate Caucus. Lott has a long history of support for Taiwan, and is one of the few remaining senators that signed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979.^[4]

2006 re-election campaign

Main article: Mississippi U.S. Senate election, 2006

Lott faced no Republican opposition in the race. ^[5]

State representative Erik Fleming placed first of four candidates in the June Democratic primary, but did not receive the 50 percent of the vote required to earn the party's nomination. He and second-place finisher Bill Bowlin faced off in a runoff on June 27, and Fleming won with 65% of the vote.

Fleming, however, was not regarded as a serious opponent, and Lott handily defeated him with 64% of the vote.

Return to power

On November 15, 2006, Lott returned to the Senate Republican leadership by being elected Minority Whip. He beat Lamar Alexander of Tennessee by a 25-24 vote.^[6] He had briefly considered running against Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for minority leader.

Trivia

• With fellow Senators Larry Craig, James Jeffords, and former Senator John Ashcroft, formed a barbershop quartet called The Singing Senators.
• Congressman Chip Pickering (R-MS) and Congressman Roger Wicker (R-MS) are both former staffers for Trent Lott.
• Mississippi lawyer Richard Scruggs, notable for his role in the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, is Lott's brother-in-law. Scruggs is currently representing Lott in a lawsuit against insurance company State Farm because of damage stemming from Hurricane Katrina.
• In 1976 Lott spearheaded efforts to have the constitution amended ^{[dubious — see talk page]} to repeal the ban of confederate veterans from serving in public office, a successful effort, ultimately merely symbolic and best summed up by his stated belief that Jefferson Davis was a hero.
• In 1962, during Trent's presidency of his fraternity, Sigma Nu, 24 weapons were confiscated in a raid by federal marshalls during desegregation of the University of Mississippi.^[7]
• The Star Wars character Lott Dod was named in part after Trent Lott.^{[citation needed]}
• In January 1999, thanks to Lott's intense lobbying, 3 Southern states received 14 extra days of duck hunting that month.^{[citation needed]}
• A school in Pascagoula, Mississippi is named after him, Trent Lott Middle School.
• Was against U.S. Navy aircraft carriers being named after living people, e.g., the USS Ronald Reagan.^{[citation needed]}
• Son Of Nun has a song entitled Trent Lott

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Herding Cats: A Life in Politics (Regan Books: 2005) ISBN 0-06-059931-6
• Donald W. Beachler, Militias and Segregationists, Polity, April 2003

Wikipedia information about Trent Lott This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Trent Lott". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.