48 Facts About Trent Lott

Trent Lott entered Congress as one of the first of a wave of Republicans winning seats in Southern states that had been solidly Democratic.

From 1968 to 1972, Lott was an administrative assistant to Representative William M Colmer of Mississippi, who was the chairman of the House Rules Committee.

In 1988, Lott ran successfully for the US Senate to replace another retiree, John C Stennis.

Trent Lott was Senate Majority Leader until June 6,2001, when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords changed his party affiliation from Republican to Independent, and caucused with the Senate Democrats for the remainder of his term.

However, on 20 December 2002, after significant controversy following comments he made regarding Strom Thurmond's presidential candidacy, Trent Lott resigned as Senate Minority Leader.

Trent Lott serves as a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he focuses on issues related to energy, national security, transportation and congressional reforms.

In June 2020 Trent Lott was fired from the Washington law and lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs while negotiating to join another firm.

Days later on June 15,2020, Trent Lott joined Crossroads Strategies along with his longtime colleague John Breaux.

Trent Lott was born in Grenada, Mississippi, and lived his early years in nearby Duck Hill, where his father, Chester Paul Trent Lott, sharecropped a stretch of cotton field.

Trent Lott's father was a philanderer with a drinking problem, and Trent Lott frequently acted as a mediator when his mother threatened his father with divorce.

When Trent Lott was in the sixth grade, the family moved to Pascagoula, where Trent Lott's father worked at a shipyard.

Trent Lott attended college at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in public administration in 1963 and a Juris doctor degree in 1967.

Trent Lott served as a field representative for Ole Miss and was president of his fraternity, Sigma Nu.

Trent Lott was an Ole Miss cheerleader, on the same team with future US Senator Thad Cochran.

At the time that Trent Lott was president, the Sigma Nu fraternity house was raided by the troops from the 716th Battalion during the "Battle of Oxford".

Trent Lott served as administrative assistant to House Rules Committee chairman William M Colmer, of Pascagoula, from 1968 to 1972.

Trent Lott endorsed Lott as his successor in Mississippi's 5th District, located in the state's southern tip, even though Lott ran as a Republican.

Trent Lott won handily, in large part due to Richard Nixon's landslide victory in that year's presidential election.

Trent Lott's strong showing in the polls landed him on the powerful House Judiciary Committee as a freshman, where he voted against all three articles of impeachment drawn up against Nixon during the committee's debate.

Trent Lott became very popular in his district, even though almost none of its living residents had been represented by a Republican before.

Cochran was reelected in a rout; he and Trent Lott were the first Republicans to win a second term in Congress from the state since Reconstruction.

Trent Lott was re-elected six more times without much difficulty, and even ran unopposed in 1978.

Trent Lott served as House Minority Whip from 1981 to 1989; he was the first Southern Republican to hold such a high leadership position.

Trent Lott ran for the Senate in 1988, after 42-year incumbent John Stennis announced he would not run for another term.

Trent Lott defeated Democratic 4th District Congressman Wayne Dowdy by almost eight points.

Trent Lott was re-elected in 1994,2000, and 2006 with no substantive Democratic opposition.

Trent Lott gave some thought to retirement for much of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, he announced on January 17,2006 that he would run for a fourth term.

Trent Lott became Senate Majority Whip when the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1995.

Trent Lott faced his Mississippi colleague Thad Cochran, the then-Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Trent Lott promised a "more aggressive" style of leadership and courted the younger Senate conservatives.

Trent Lott generally pursued a conservative position in politics and was a noted social conservative.

Trent Lott was due to become majority leader again in early 2003 after Republican gains in the November 2002 elections.

Trent Lott spoke on December 5,2002, at the 100th birthday party of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a retiring Republican senator who had switched parties from the Democrats decades earlier.

The Washington Post reported that Trent Lott had made similar comments about Thurmond's candidacy in a 1980 rally.

Trent Lott gave an interview with Black Entertainment Television explaining himself and repudiating Thurmond's former views.

Trent Lott battled with Bush over military base closures in his home state.

Trent Lott showed support for passenger rail initiatives, notably his 2006 bipartisan introduction, with Sen.

On July 18,2006, Trent Lott voted with 19 Republican senators for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act to lift restrictions on federal funding for the research.

On November 26,2007, Trent Lott announced that he would resign his Senate seat by the end of 2007.

In September 2014, lobbyist filings revealed that Trent Lott was contracted to advocate on behalf of Gazprombank, a Russian majority state-owned bank targeted with sanctions over the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine.

Trent Lott was fired by Squire Patton Boggs in June 2020; no explanation was provided for his departure.

Trent Lott serves on the board of directors of Airbus North America.

On October 10,2008, Trent Lott was named Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin.

In 2012, Trent Lott testified in federal court that he never told DeLaughter that he would be recommended for a federal judgeship.

Trent Lott is a Freemason, and holds the Grand Cross in the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Trent Lott is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

Trent Lott's memoir, entitled Herding Cats: A Life in Politics, was published in 2005.

Trent Lott has been quoted as being opposed to homosexuality, comparing it to other issues such as alcoholism.