# Trent Lott **Trent Lott** (b. October 9, 1941, Grenada, Mississippi) is a Mississippi Republican who rose from House whip to Senate Majority Leader. He lost the leadership over his December 2002 praise of [[Strom Thurmond]]'s 1948 segregationist presidential campaign. Since leaving the Senate in December 2007 he has been one of K Street's best-known former-member lobbyists. He is a textbook legislator-to-lobbyist [[Revolving Door]] case, and his exit was timed to beat a tougher [[Cooling-Off Period]]. He is listed in the [[Revolving Door Roster]]. ## Congressional career | Years | Position | |---|---| | 1973–1989 | U.S. House, Mississippi's 5th district; House Republican whip 1981–1989 | | 1989–2007 | U.S. Senate | | 1996–2001 | Senate Majority Leader from June 12, 1996, succeeding [[Bob Dole]] (Democrats briefly held control January 3–20, 2001) | | 2001–2002 | Senate Republican leader in the minority after June 2001 | | 2007 | Senate Minority Whip, January to his resignation on December 18 | ## The Thurmond remarks (2002) At Thurmond's 100th birthday party on December 5, 2002, Lott said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Thurmond's 1948 run was the [[Dixiecrats]] campaign for segregation. Major outlets were slow to treat the remark as news. [[Josh Marshall]] at [[Talking Points Memo]], along with other bloggers, kept it in circulation until mainstream coverage caught up. A Harvard Kennedy School case study credits Marshall as instrumental in the scandal, which became an early demonstration of blogs setting the national agenda. Republicans had just won back the Senate, so Lott was due to become majority leader again in January 2003. Instead he stepped down as Republican leader on December 20, 2002, and Bill Frist replaced him. ## Resignation and the cooling-off clock Lott returned to leadership as minority whip in 2007, then announced in November 2007 that he would leave the Senate with five years left on his term. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, passed that year, doubled the post-service ban on former senators lobbying Congress from one year to two, effective January 1, 2008. Leaving on December 18, 2007 kept Lott under the one-year rule. He denied that the ethics change drove his decision (NPR). ## Lobbying career | Period | Firm | |---|---| | January 2008–2010 | Breaux Lott Leadership Group, co-founded with former Sen. [[John Breaux]] (D-LA) | | 2010–June 2020 | Patton Boggs, which acquired the firm; after the 2014 merger, [[Squire Patton Boggs]] | | June 2020–present | [[Crossroads Strategies]], alongside Breaux | Squire Patton Boggs and Lott split abruptly in June 2020. The firm said only that it was "the right time to make a change." Lott said he and Breaux were already negotiating to leave for "a strictly public policy firm," citing client conflicts at a global law firm. Clients named at the 2020 move included AT&T, PhRMA, Nissan North America and Northrop Grumman (Roll Call). Lott is still active. Crossroads Strategies' first-quarter 2026 lobbying reports list him on accounts including TikTok Inc. and the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, [[Boeing]], GE Aerospace, Textron, [[Huntington Ingalls Industries]], Norfolk Southern, Airlines for America, Nissan North America and Coupang. An October 2025 registration for the Daimler Truck dealer council also lists him (LDA filings). ## See Also - [[Revolving Door Roster]] · [[Revolving Door]] · [[Lobbying Hub]] · [[Lobbying]] · [[Cooling-Off Period]] - [[John Breaux]] · [[Crossroads Strategies]] · [[Squire Patton Boggs]] · [[Strom Thurmond]] · [[Josh Marshall]] · [[Talking Points Memo]] · [[Southern Strategy]] · [[Roger Wicker]]