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From http://lott.senate.gov/leader/bio.html:

U.S. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi is the Senate's Republican Leader. From June 12, 1996, until June 5, 2001, he served as the Senate's 16th Majority Leader, the first Mississippian to hold that leadership post.
A native Mississippian, Senator Lott began his political career in 1968 as Administrative Assistant to U.S. Representative William Colmer, D-Mississippi. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1972 and served until 1988 when he was elected to the Senate. He was re-elected to a second term in 1994 and a third term in 2000.
The respect shown Senator Lott by his colleagues in both the House and Senate is reflected by the leadership positions to which he has been elected. In 1979, he was elected Chairman of the House Republican Research Committee, the fifth ranking Republican leadership position in the House. In 1980 he was elected Republican Whip, the second ranking Republican leadership position. The first Southerner to be elected to that position, he was re-elected to the post three times.
In the Senate, Senator Lott continued his leadership service as Secretary of the Senate Republican Conference. In 1995, he was elected Senate Majority Whip. Senator Lott is the first person to be elected to the position of Whip in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Senator Lott has won the admiration of his constituents with his service to Mississippians. A June 1995 Political/Media Research Inc. poll asked the constituents of 89 sitting Senators (the 11 freshmen were not included) how they rated the job performance of their Senator. Senator Lott received a 75 percent positive rating from Mississippians, earning him the second best constituent ranking in the Senate.
In the Senate, Lott serves on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Rules Committee.
He was born October 9, 1941, in Grenada County, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper farmer turned shipyard worker and a school teacher. He received his Bachelor of Science in Public Administration degree in 1963 and his Juris Doctorate in 1967 from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He is married to Patricia (Tricia) Thompson Lott, originally of Pascagoula, Mississippi. Senator and Mrs. Lott are the parents of son, Chet, and daughter, Tyler, who have blessed them with three grandchildren: Trent, Shields Elizabeth, and Lucie Sims.

And, from http://lott.senate.gov/news/2000/129.thurmond.html:

Senate GOP leader apologizes for remark
By Jim Abrams=
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Faced with an uproar over his remark that the nation would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency when he ran on a segregationist ticket in 1948, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott apologized Monday night, saying he misspoke.

A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past,'' Lott, R-Miss., said in a statement. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement.''
Lott spokesman Ron Bonjean said the senator issued the statement "out of personal concern for the misunderstanding.''
Former Vice President Al Gore said earlier Monday that Lott should be censured for his ``racist statement.''
Lott made his comments last Thursday at a party celebrating the 100th birthday of Thurmond, who is retiring as South Carolina's senator after a record 48 years of service.
Lott, who will become Senate majority leader when the next Congress convenes in January, had issued an earlier statement denying support for Thurmond's past positions.

``This was a lighthearted celebration of the 100th birthday of legendary Senator Strom Thurmond,'' Lott said then. ``My comments were not an endorsement of his positions of over 50 years ago, but of the man and his life.''
Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina in 1948, ran for president as a states' rights and anti-integration Dixiecrat, opposing the civil rights policies of President Truman. He captured 39 southern electoral votes, including those of Lott's state, Mississippi.

Thurmond entered the Senate in 1954 and became one of the South's most vocal opponents of integration, opposing the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision and filibustering against civil rights legislation. He changed positions later in the year, hiring black staffers and helping promote blacks to federal judgeships.

``I want to say this about my state,'' Lott said last Thursday. ``When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it,'' he said to applause. ``And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.''

Kevin L. Martin, government and political affairs director of the African American Republican Leadership Council, said people were overreacting to the remarks. ``By no means was he endorsing segregation or anything like that. It was lighthearted, it was humorous.'' Martin said Lott captures 25 percent of the black vote in Mississippi, which he said couldn't happen if Lott were a racist.

But Gore, speaking on CNN's ``Inside Politics,'' said the Senate should censure Lott. ``It is not a small thing for one of the half-dozen most prominent political leaders in America to say that our problems are caused by integration and that we should have had a segregationist candidate. That is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines.''

The Rev. Jesse Jackson had said Sunday that Lott should step down. ``Shame on the Republican Party if it does not demote him for promoting this mean-spirited and immoral propaganda. ``The civil rights movement was one of America's finest hours. Strom Thurmond's massive resistance to that movement, and his support in states like Mississippi, was one of history's low points. Trent Lott must not be allowed to tarnish that truth.''

One Democrat, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, defended Lott on Monday, saying he had spoken with Lott and had accepted Lott's explanation that he hadn't meant for the remarks to be interpreted as they were. ``There are a lot of times when he and I go to the microphone and would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I'm sure this was one of those cases for him, as well,'' Daschle said.
AP-ES-12-09-02 2213EST

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