GOP Fissure Opens in Senate Over Lott’s Leadership

A top Republican on Sunday called for a new election for Senate majority leader -- a fissure within the GOP ranks that seriously threatens Sen. Trent Lott’s hold on the job.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) became the first lawmaker to break ranks since Lott (R-Miss.) made comments that seemed to endorse segregation. Even President Bush rebuked the fellow Republican. Nickles, the Senate GOP whip, said Lott was so weakened by the controversy that he doubted his ability to “enact our agenda.”

Lott was selected last month to be majority leader when the Republicans take control of the Senate in January. However, the withering criticism he has endured over his remark praising the 1948 presidential campaign of then-segregationist Strom Thurmond has raised questions about whether the GOP can afford politically for him to remain in that important post.

Lott has apologized repeatedly, and he said at a news conference Friday that he has no plans to give up his post. He is to appear tonight on the Black Entertainment Television network to again convey his regrets.

In publicly questioning whether Lott has become a liability for the GOP, Nickles may have opened the door for other Senate Republicans to ask whether the Mississippian should remain their leader.

GOP Sens. John W. Warner of Virginia and Charles Hagel of Nebraska said Sunday that their colleagues should meet to consider Lott’s future to try to put the controversy behind them.

“The buck stops not with one senator or a handful of senators, but it’s all 51 [Republican senators] ... deciding on what steps we should take,” Warner said in an interview. “It may be at that meeting that we decide to give him another chance.”

Hagel said his colleagues must either “reconfirm their confidence” in Lott’s leadership or select a new leader. “In the interest of the Republican Party, the president’s agenda and the nation, this issue must be resolved quickly,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from Lott on Sunday, but his supporters dismissed Nickles’ comments as coming from a longtime Lott rival who has coveted the majority leader job for himself. Lott’s allies also doubted that Nickles could muster the votes to topple Lott.

“I do not believe that Trent Lott has lost the confidence of the Republican Caucus,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told CNN’s “Late Edition.” “I think he accurately said that he shouldn’t have to resign for being called something that he is not.”

“He made a terrible mistake,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the incoming GOP whip, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “He’s apologized, at last count, on four different occasions, and it seems to me that we ought to accept his apology and move on.”

Before a new leadership election could be called, five GOP senators would have to make the request, said an aide to Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the conference chairman. The entire 51-member conference then would vote on whether to hold a new election. Any vote on a new leader would be a secret ballot.

“I don’t think there are five senators right now who believe that Sen. Lott’s apologies should not be accepted,” McConnell said.

Santorum also defended Lott. “I know Trent Lott,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “One of the reasons I think that Republican senators will line up behind him -- and many Democrats too -- is because they know this man.... This man is not anything like what some are depicting him to be. This is ... someone who believes all men are created equal -- not just under the Constitution, but more importantly in the eyes of our creator.”

In a statement issued by his office, Nickles said that Lott has apologized “and rightly so.”

“However, this is bigger than any single senator now,” he said, adding that he is concerned that Lott has “weakened to the point that it may jeopardize his ability to enact our agenda and speak to all Americans.”

“There are several outstanding senators who are more than capable of effective leadership,” Nickles added. “I hope we have an opportunity to choose.”

Nickles aide Brook Simmons said that his boss spoke out because “someone [within the Senate GOP ranks] had to say publicly what many are saying privately.”

Nickles called White House political director Karl Rove on Saturday to give him a heads up on his statement and phoned Lott on Sunday morning. The White House had no official reaction to Nickles’ proposal.

Lott set off the furor when, at retiring Sen. Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, he said the country “wouldn’t have had all these problems” if the South Carolina Republican had won his segregationist campaign for president in 1948. Reports of Lott’s past opposition to extending the Voting Rights Act and to making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday also have become part of the debate.

But critics of Lott suggested that he must do more to make amends. “He’s also got to apologize for a lifetime ... spent in opposition to civil rights,” NAACP board Chairman Julian Bond said on CNN. “Is this the guy they want presenting the face of the Republican Party to the American people?”

“Maybe he should go on a trip with us to visit some of the historic sites of the civil rights movement,” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said on “Meet the Press.”

Some Democrats have talked about introducing a resolution censuring Lott for his comments. But McConnell said that if such a resolution is introduced, it should be amended to address racially insensitive comments made by Democrats as well. Republicans privately note that Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) used a derogatory racial term in a television interview a year ago.

McConnell also scoffed at speculation that if Lott is forced out of his leadership post, he would resign his Senate seat, paving the way for Mississippi’s Democratic governor to appoint a replacement -- a move that would leave 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats and one independent in the Senate, effectively negating the GOP majority.

John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said that Nickles’ comments could spell the end of Lott’s leadership position. “If this were an episode of ‘ER,’ it would be the scene where the lines on the monitor start to go flat,” he said.

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Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Edmund Sanders and Aaron Zitner contributed to this report.