Lott Apologizes for Comments on Thurmond
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Tue Dec 10, 7:27 AM ET |
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By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, battered by
a sharp backlash from a comment at a birthday party, has apologized for
implying the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond won the
presidency when he ran in 1948 on a
segregationist ticket.
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"A
poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the
discarded policies of the past," Lott said in a statement issued Monday
night. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone
who was offended by my statement."
Lott's statement came "out of personal concern for the
misunderstanding," his spokesman, Ron Bonjean, said.
Earlier Monday, former Vice President Al Gore (news
- web
sites), who served in the Senate with Lott and Thurmond, said Lott should
resign because of his "racist statement."
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has made the same demand in
describing Lott, a Mississippi Republican, as "an unrepentant Confederate
who cannot speak for all Americans."
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," he said. "That is divisive, and it is divisive along
racial lines."
Lott, a 14-year Senate veteran, returns to the position of
majority leader next month because Republicans recaptured control of the Senate
in November's elections. The leader of the majority party is the most powerful
senator because of the leader's control of the Senate agenda.
At a party celebrating retiring Sen. Thurmond's 100th birthday,
attended by hundreds of Thurmond's family members and friends from South
Carolina, Senate colleagues and members of the Supreme Court, Lott said that
when Thurmond ran for president on a states' rights, anti-integration ticket in
1948, Mississippi voted for him.
"We're proud of it," Lott 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."
In a statement Monday before he apologized, Lott insisted his
comments last week had been lighthearted and in no way endorsed Thurmond's
positions of more than a half-century ago.
"This was a lighthearted celebration of the 100th birthday of
legendary Sen. Strom Thurmond (news,
bio,
voting
record)," Lott said in his first statement. "My comments were not
an endorsement of his positions of over 50 years ago, but of the man and his
life."
A call left at Thurmond's Washington office after work hours was
not immediately returned.
Jackson, in a statement, said Lott should step down. "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 one of history's low points. Trent Lott must not be
allowed to tarnish that truth."
Kevin Martin, government and political affairs director of the
African American Republican Leadership Council, said people were overreacting.
"By no means was he endorsing segregation or anything like that,"
Martin said. "It was lighthearted. It was humorous." Martin said Lott
wins 25 percent of the black vote in Mississippi, which he said couldn't happen
if Lott were a racist.
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle also came to Lott's defense
Monday, saying he had talked with Lott on the phone and 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.
Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, received 39 electoral
votes in his 1948 president bid, all from Southern states.
He entered the Senate in 1954 and became one of the South's most
vocal opponents of integration. He opposed the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs.
Board of Education school desegregation decision and filibustered against civil
rights legislation.
Later in his career he changed his positions, hiring black staff
members and helping promote blacks to federal judgeships.
Thurmond retired this year as history's oldest member of Congress
and the longest-serving senator ever.