Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Nov. 26 — Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi announced that he will resign from Congress by the end of the year, saying “it’s time to do something else.”

“I don’t know what the future holds,” Lott, 66, the No. 2 Senate Republican leader, said at a press conference in Pascagoula, Mississippi. “A lot of options, hopefully, will be available.”

Lott served in the House and Senate for 35 years and was Senate majority leader from 1996 to 2002. He resigned that post after being criticized for praising South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist campaign for president. Last year he returned to a leadership role when he became lieutenant to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

He said his decision to leave now is driven by a number of factors, including a desire to spend more time with his family.

He said that while he is exploring other career opportunities, he’s “not really involved in negotiations.”

“There’s no malice, no anger,” Lott said. “There’s nothing but happiness and pride at the job that I’ve been allowed to do by the people of Mississippi and by my colleagues in the House and Senate.”

Lott is the sixth incumbent Republican senator to decide to retire before the 2008 election.

Both Seats

His retirement means that both of Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seats will be on the ballot in 2008. Republican Thad Cochran, 69, the other Mississippi senator, has said he will run for re- election next year when his six-year term expires.

Jennifer Duffy, Senate editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Democrats face tough challenges trying to pick up one of the seats, in part because the state is Republican-dominated. Mississippi gave 59 percent of its vote to President George W. Bush in 2004.

“Mississippi is tough for Democrats in a presidential year,” Duffy said. She said that if New York Senator Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee, “it gets tougher.”

Still, Democrats now control the Mississippi state Senate with a four-vote margin and control the House with a 27-vote margin, said Marty Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.

“There’s a strong Democratic sentiment out there,” Wiseman said.

Naming a Replacement

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican, said in a statement he will appoint a replacement until the 2008 congressional election, when a successor would be elected. Barbour’s statement said he wouldn’t run for the office himself nor appoint himself to the vacancy.

Lott noted today that he ran for re-election in 2006 to help his state recover from Hurricane Katrina.

The hurricane destroyed his home in Pascagoula and he sued his insurer, State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., to force it to pay for rebuilding after the company said Lott’s policy didn’t cover the damages. Lott in 2005 told the Biloxi, Mississippi, Sun Herald that the waterfront home was his “nest egg.”

Lott said his decision wasn’t heavily influenced by lobbying restrictions that will go into effect Jan. 1. Legislation signed into law by Bush earlier this year would double to two years the waiting period before U.S. senators can lobby their former colleagues. The provision would cover senators who were in office after Dec. 31.

The lawmaker published a memoir in 2005 in which he criticized some of his Senate colleagues, which also spurred speculation over his future in Washington.

Lott in a September interview said he was displeased by the increasingly polarized Senate.

“I don’t like some of the negativism that we’re dealing with now, but that’s life, and that’s the role, I guess, of politics sometimes,” he said today.

McConnell today said in a statement that “Mississippi will miss his tireless advocacy; the Senate will miss his experience and advice, and I will miss a good friend.”

(Bloomberg)