Trent Lott

Trent Lott (2007)

Chester Trent Lott (born October 9, 1941 in Grenada , Mississippi ) is an American politician and former US Senator for the state of Mississippi. Lott was twice leader of the Republican majority parliamentary group in the Senate, but had to resign due to heavily criticized statements about the former presidential candidate Strom Thurmond . He was "Minority Whip" (parliamentary group leader) of the Republicans in the Senate of the 110th Congress.

Early career

Lott attended the University of Mississippi , where he graduated in law in 1967. At university he was president of the Sigma Nu fraternity . During his Sigma Nu presidency, the university was desegregated as part of the civil rights movement ; During a raid, the police found several weapons in the building of the all-white student union. After graduation, he moved to Pascagoula , Mississippi, and opened a law firm. He still lives there today, but his home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina .

Like most white Mississippi residents at the time, he began his career as a Democrat . Between 1968 and 1972 he worked for the Pascagoula congressman William M. Colmer . After Colmer, one of the leading supporters of racial segregation within the Democrats, left Congress, he supported Lott as his successor, although Lott ran for the Republicans.

Lott won the election easily, adding to the trend that large swathes of the Conservative Solid South Democrats turned away from their party in the 1960s and 1970s and supported the Republicans. Conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, for example, won 87% of the vote in Mississippi in the 1964 presidential election , despite the huge losses across the country.

Lott benefited from a Republican landslide victory in his first election. In the presidential election , which was running at the same time , Richard Nixon prevailed; in Mississippi it won 78% of the vote. He and Thad Cochran were the second and third Republicans elected in Mississippi since the Reconstruction era. Lott won the next six elections without any problems, and in 1978 he didn't even have an opponent. From 1981 to 1989 he was "House Minority Whip", the second highest Republican in the House of Representatives, and thus the first Republican from the southern states to hold such a high position.

In the Senate

After longtime Senator John C. Stennis failed to run, Lott ran and beat Congressman Wayne Dowdy by eight percentage points. It was his closest election result as a Senator, in 1994 and 2000 he won much higher. In November 2006 he was confirmed for a further six years.

After the Republicans won a majority in the Senate in 1995, he took the post of Senate Majority Leader after Bob Dole stepped down from the post in 1996 to run for the presidency. He was best known for driving the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton , although it was already foreseeable that it would not achieve the required two-thirds majority.

Controversy and resignation

Trent Lott (2nd from right) speaking at the side of President George W. Bush (2002)

In 2002, Lott congratulated Senator Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, who ran as a presidential candidate in 1948 for the Dixiecrats - Democrats who feared racial segregation in the United States. During the speech he said:

I want to say this about my state: 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 all these years, either.

I want to say this about my state: when Strom Thurmond ran for president, we elected him. We were proud of it and if the rest of the US had followed us we would not have had all the problems we have had since.

The statement was interpreted in such a way that Lott continues to advocate racial segregation. He himself said that he meant other items in Thurmond's program and explicitly stated that he considered segregation amoral and supported affirmative action .

Lott had already taken controversial positions on several occasions in this regard. In 1972, he enforced the (symbolic) law that Confederate veterans were no longer excluded from service in the US Army. He himself sees Confederate President Jefferson Davis as a "hero". Lott voted against the Voting Rights Act and opposed giving Martin Luther King a public holiday . He has close ties to the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens , referred to as the "hate group" by several organizations such as the NAACP .

After President George W. Bush also heavily criticized the statement, he could no longer hold his position. He resigned as group leader; Bill Frist from Tennessee succeeded him. He then took over the chairmanship of the rules of procedure committee , which he still had considerable influence on what happened in the Senate. Through his seat on that committee, he was also a member of the committee for the Library of Congress . He also sat on the Trade, Science and Transport Committee .

After his resignation as leader of the parliamentary group, things calmed down around Lott. However, he also began to criticize conservatives within the Republicans when he called for Donald Rumsfeld to step down. Several times he got into violent arguments with President Bush over the closure of military bases in Mississippi. On November 26, 2007, Lott announced his resignation as senator. He was succeeded by Congressman Roger Wicker .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Influential Republican resigns  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

literature

• Trent Lott: Herding Cats: A Life in Politics . Regan Books, 2005, ISBN 0060599316 .
• Donald W. Beachler: Militias and Segregationists . Polity, 2003

Web links

Commons : Trent Lott  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Trent Lott  - Quotes

• Trent Lott in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Trent Lott in the nndb (English)
• Lott Decried for Part of Salute to Thurmond, The Washington Post
• Lott Remarks on Thurmond Echoed 1980 Words, The Washington Post
• Bloggers Catch What Washington Post Missed, The Guardian (UK)
• Lott to run again for Senate, CNN