December
19, 2002 4:20 p.m. Turning
a Corner?
Trent
Lott does a vote count.
ources
on Capitol Hill say Sen. Trent Lott has collected assurances from more
than 20 Republican senators that they will support him in a new election
to determine whether Lott will remain as Senate Majority Leader. "We've
got well over 20 and are approaching 26," says one Lott supporter.
Twenty-six votes (out of a total of 51 GOP senators) are required for
Lott to keep his job.
The names of
several of those supporters have been reported in the last few hours. Among
the Republicans said to be in Lott's corner are Sens. Campbell, Crapo, Craig,
DeWine, Ensign, Gregg, Hatch, Lugar, McConnell, Santorum, Shelby, Specter,
Stevens, and Voinovich.
Today, others have
lined up behind Lott. Lott's fellow Mississippian, Thad Cochran, made
a statement of support — a significant move, considering that Cochran
once challenged Lott for the Republican leadership post. "I think
the uproar over what he said at the party has gone far beyond a reasonable
response," Cochran told the Biloxi Sun-Herald. Also, Elizabeth
Dole, the newly elected senator from North Carolina, appears to have decided
to support Lott. "Senator Lott called his remarks 'terrible and insensitive,'"
Dole told the High Point Enterprise. "I am pleased he has
apologized, and I believe he was sincere in his regrets. If I thought
for one second that Trent Lott was endorsing segregation, then he should
resign, but I don't believe that he was."
Beyond that, there
are said to be several other senators who plan to vote for Lott but who
have not publicly announced their decisions. "There seems to be momentum
shifting in his direction with the statements coming out in favor of Sen.
Lott," says another Lott backer. "They [the GOP senators] understand
that this has been over-covered and overplayed."
One Republican senator
who will likely not vote for Lott is Rhode Island's Lincoln Chaffee, who
yesterday called for Lott to resign. People close to Lott were not at
all disappointed by the liberal Chafee's decision, believing it might
encourage some conservative senators to stick with Lott.
There is also an
indication that some GOP senators are reacting negatively to leaks from
the White House suggesting that President Bush wants to see Lott go. "This
is a Senate matter," Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told the New
York Times. "The worst thing the president could do is get into
the middle of it."
Also working in Lott's
favor is a sense that his Democratic critics have overreached in their
attempts to use his remarks about Strom Thurmond as an occasion to equate
the Republican party with racism. In particular, former president Bill
Clinton said yesterday that Lott has embarrassed his party "by saying
in Washington what they do on the back roads every day....They try to
suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and
South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it."
Such statements create an inevitable reaction among Republicans, regardless
of their position on the Lott issue, and that could result in more support
for the majority leader.
At this point, Lott's
supporters believe the situation may be turning in Lott's direction. "Word
seemed to be going around late yesterday that our opponents were backing
off," says one supporter. If that is so, it is at least in part the
result of Lott's aggressive head-counting operation. "There's nobody
better at that," says the supporter.
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ources
on Capitol Hill say Sen. Trent Lott has collected assurances from more
than 20 Republican senators that they will support him in a new election
to determine whether Lott will remain as Senate Majority Leader. "We've
got well over 20 and are approaching 26," says one Lott supporter.
Twenty-six votes (out of a total of 51 GOP senators) are required for
Lott to keep his job. 
