Lott announces resignation
WASHINGTON - Sen. Trent Lott, a 35-year Capitol Hill veteran who staged a political comeback after losing his Senate leadership post because of racially insensitive remarks, plans to resign by year’s end.
By resigning, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican will avoid an ethics rule that takes effect by the end of the year, allowing him to pursue a lucrative lobbying job after a year’s wait rather than after two years.
The Mississippi senator is the latest veteran GOP lawmaker to announce plans to depart Congress after the party lost its majority to Democrats in the 2006 election. Former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert quit Monday night.
Lott is the sixth GOP senator to announce plans to leave the divided chamber, which is mired in partisan conflict that is expected to worsen as the 2008 campaign heats up.
“We’ve had this great experience for these 35 years, but we do think that there is time left for us to maybe do something else,” Lott said of the decision he made with his wife, Tricia. Lott, who was elected to the House in 1972 and moved to the Senate in 1988, said he had no health problems.
But the timing of his departure fueled speculation that Lott, 66, was leaving to join the parade of former lawmakers who turn to lobbying to cash in on their experience and connections.
An ethics bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush this year doubles, to two years, the “cooling-off” period senators must wait after leaving Capitol Hill before they can lobby their former colleagues.
While Democrats face an uphill battle to capture Lott’s seat, his departure is a symbolically deeper wound to Republicans. Lott has served as a member of either the House or Senate Republican leadership for 19 of the past 27 years, and he is leaving midterm after winning his fourth six-year term last November.
“If I were 20 years younger, I’d be mounting my horse saying, ‘Let’s get this majority back,’ ” Lott said in his hometown of Pascagoula, Miss.
In the post-World War II era, only two senators have left midterm for life in the private sector, according to the Senate Historian’s Office. David Boren, D-Okla., became a university president in 1994 and Albert “Happy” Chandler, D-Ky., left the Senate to become commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1945. Others who left midterm moved to other public posts or were driven from office by scandal.
Lott’s departure is equally stunning because of his political comeback after allegations of racial insensitivity drove him from the leadership.
Poised to become majority leader, Lott praised Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential campaign at a 100th birthday party and retirement celebration for the South Carolina Republican in December 2002, saying the nation would not have “all these problems” if Thurmond had been elected. With the blessing of the Bush White House, Republicans banished Lott from the leadership.
Lott spent four years as a backbench Republican, burnishing his image as a behind-the-scenes dealmaker. By the end of 2005 - a year in which his mother died and his Pascagoula home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina - he planned to announce his retirement rather than seek re-election, he said. But Lott cited the need to help his state recover from Katrina, cruised to a re-election victory and threw himself last fall into a hotly contested bid for minority whip, winning by one vote.
That left the impression that he would remain in the chamber, and part of its leadership.
But Lott’s bipartisan skills have not been in high demand this past year, as the legislative agenda has nearly ground to a halt in a partisan standoff on issues ranging from the Iraq war to immigration reform.
“I think it was a surprise that it came right now, this soon,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., Lott’s vote-counting deputy. “He just sort of reached the end of the line in terms of what he can do here. It’s kind of the cumulative effect of 39 years of wear and tear.”
The GOP departures have been a blow to Republican hopes of regaining their majority. With Lott’s departure, the GOP must defend 23 seats next year compared with 12 for Democrats.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said that once Lott resigns, he will appoint a successor to serve until an election is held next year. Republican Reps. Charles “Chip” Pickering and Roger Wicker are considered possible successors. Among Democrats, former Attorney General Mike Moore is mentioned as a possible candidate next year.