Trent Lott finally resigns

December 19, 2007

Republican Trent Lott, dogged by his racism questions for years, resigned from the US Senate on Tuesday, leaving a post he has held since 1988.

Lott, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, announced in his home state Nov. 26 that he would resign by year's end. Lott said he wants to pursue other interests, but he hasn't said what those are.

Lott most likely will enter the lobbying business with one of his longtime friends, former Sen. John Breaux, a conservative Democrat from Louisiana.

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour will appoint a successor to serve until a special election is held next year.

Lott, 66, served as Senate majority leader when Republicans controlled that body but was pushed out of the leadership post after he told a 2002 birthday gathering for former Sen. Strom Thurmond that the country would have avoided "all these problems" if Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential bid had succeeded.

Lott later apologized for his "poor choice of words."

Before his tenure in the Senate, Lott represented Mississippi for 16 years in the House of Representatives.

Racist questions follow Lott

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 for many years 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.

Lott hosted Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) leaders, an American "paleoconservative" political organization that supports a large variety of localized grassroots causes including white separatism, 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!"

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