It's Frist

Senate Republicans unanimously elected Bill Frist as their new leader Monday, turning to the Tennessee moderate to help heal the damage that Trent Lott's racially charged remarks have had on GOP efforts to court minority voters.

The 50-year-old Frist, a wealthy heart surgeon and close ally of the president, will become Senate majority leader when the GOP takes control of the chamber in January.

He was elected during an unprecedented 45-minute conference call among most of the 51-member Senate Republican Caucus.

Speaking after the vote from Nashville, Tenn., Frist said he hopes the controversy that forced Lott aside can become "a catalyst for unity" and for "positive change."

Frist said senators need to "heal the wounds of division" that he says have been "reopened so prominently in the past few weeks."

President Bush quickly congratulated Frist, saying, in a written statement, that Frist has "earned the trust and respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle."

The president said he looks forward to working with Frist to advance his agenda for a "safer, stronger and better America."

Frist is considered an authority on health issues in the Senate. He still keeps his starched white lab coat in the trunk of his car, makes monthly visits to hospitals and clinics and goes on occasional overseas medical missions. When the anthrax scare surfaced on Capitol Hill last year, he worked to calm his colleagues.

Frist will "be a different face than what we've had," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Sunday during a broadcast interview. "I'm not criticizing what we've had, but I think Bill has a kind of a more moderate record and a more moderate approach toward things, and I think that it's going to be very difficult to criticize him."

"I think every Republican is working hard to try and be good to minorities and do what's right. We can't support some of the far-left, you know, extreme approaches toward race, but we certainly do believe in equality," Hatch added.

The election originally was scheduled for Jan. 6 — when all senators return to Washington for the beginning of the new congressional session — but several Republican senators wanted to try and put Lott's controversy behind them before returning to the Capitol to work.

Lott, R-Miss., spoke for more than three minutes during the conference call, and sounded very gracious and thankful — "as enthusiastic as anyone could possibly sound in that circumstance," a source said. Lott offered to do whatever he could to help the new leadership team, the source added.

Lott, 61, thanked everyone for "their support and their prayers," said Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 GOP leader.

But "no one felt good about what's gone on for the last few weeks," Santorum added.

Lott lost the confidence of the Senate GOP after remarks earlier this month at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., praising the retiring senator's 1948 pro-segregation presidential campaign. Lott apologized several times, but to no avail.

Lott will remain in the Senate, but not in a leadership role. Republican sources said it appeared that Lott, a senator since 1989, had waited too long to end the controversy and lost any leverage he might have had to cut a deal to become a committee chairman.

In his first public remarks since resigning, Lott told The Associated Press on Sunday that he had fallen into a trap set by his political enemies and had "only myself to blame."

"There are some people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time," Lott said in an interview outside his home in Pascagoula, Miss. "When you're from Mississippi and you're a conservative and you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame."