End Of Line For Lott

Sen. Trent Lott is resigning as Republican Senate leader two weeks after his endorsement of Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential bid touched off a national uproar.

"In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as Majority Leader of the United States Senate," Lott said in a written statement Friday morning. He will leave his leadership post on Jan. 6, 2003, one day before the new 108th Congress convenes with the Senate again under GOP control.

Lott, 61, said he'll stay on as a senator from Mississippi.

There's been mounting pressure from Lott's GOP Senate colleagues and the White House for him to step aside. Support was also gathering for a challenger to Lott's leadership post, Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist.

President Bush, in a statement, said he respects the "very difficult decision" Lott made and described him as "a valued friend."

Frist, a close ally of the president, made his candidacy known Thursday evening. So far he has garnered public support from at least seven senators.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a Lott supporter who colleagues said was interested in the No. 1 job if Lott stepped aside, issued a statement saying he would not seek the job. He endorsed Frist instead.

"Now is the time to move forward. It is my belief that Sen. Bill Frist is the right man at the right time to help our party do so and I will support him for majority leader," he said.

But GOP aides also said a challenge seemed to be brewing from Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who also had been supporting Lott.

The 51 GOP senators who will serve in the next Congress plan to meet Jan. 6 to elect their next leader.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota called Lott's resignation "the right decision for Sen. Lott and for the Senate."

But he said the new GOP leader must "now do more than merely disavow Sen. Lott's words. He or she must confront the Republican Party's record on race and embrace policies that promote genuine healing and greater opportunities for all Americans."

Lott's fall followed a tribute he gave earlier this month at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party.

The Mississippian at the time hailed the venerable South Carolinian and said he thought the nation would have been better off if Thurmond had won his campaign for the presidency in 1948. Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat at the time, on a mostly segregationist platform.

The remarks drew immediate criticism from black leaders and Democrats. They were quickly joined by conservatives worried that the comments would create a distracting firestorm that would harm the White House's and GOP's efforts to advance their legislative agenda.

In recent days, Lott has been spending time in Mississippi in a search for support from his colleagues. In his statement on Friday, Lott thanked those who've offered him "friendship, support and prayers."

Signs of trouble for Lott have multiplied over the week. First, liberal Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee became the first Republican to explicitly call for Lott's ouster.

Then, a CBS News/New York Times poll of members of the Republican National Committee – the party's ruling body – released Thursday found 45 percent of them thought Lott should go, while just 20 percent thought he should stay on as Senate leader.

From the start, the White House refused to throw Lott a political lifeline, reports CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer. Statements like "he does not need to resign" and Friday morning's comment that the White House would "not take sides" did nothing to help Lott's predicament.

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said that in the end Lott didn't really have much choice.

"When he sat down and considered the lack of White House support, the lack of support in the Republican minority community, the lack of support on the Hill, I think this was the only decision he could possibly arrive at," Rothenberg said.

Lott's announcement Friday amounted to a 180-degree about-face.

Earlier this week, he had vowed to stay and fight, saying that "I was elected by the people of Mississippi to a six-year term. ... I have a contract and I'm going to fulfill it."

Senior Republicans said Lott's decision caught many senior White House officials by surprise, including top political adviser Karl Rove and political director Ken Mehlman, who were not given advance notice by Lott's office. As Lott's decision leaked to news organizations, his office informed the White House that the senator was leaving his leadership post but not the Senate.

Despite speculation that Lott would demand a committee chairmanship or some other consolation prize, he stepped down with no strings attached, one official said the White House was told.

Lott has been the Senate GOP leader since 1996, when Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., left the Senate to devote full time to his unsuccessful presidential bid.

Lott is the first Senate leader ever to step down because of controversy, said Senate Historian Don Ritchie said. "We've never had a Senate Republican leader or Senate Democratic leader step down like this before," he said.