Wicker Will Step Into Lott's Shoes

Mississippi governor picks conservative Republican

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 1, 2008 4:00 AM CST

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Wicker Will Step Into Lott's Shoes — Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., speaks during a news conference in Pascagoula, Miss., Monday, Nov. 26, 2007. Lott, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, announced he was to retire from the Senate, ending a 35-year career in Congress in which he rose to his party's top Senate job only to lose it over a remark interpreted... (Associated Press)

Mississippi's governor has chosen Rep. Roger Wicker, a conservative Republican, to take Trent Lott's vacant seat in the US Senate until a special election can be called, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports. After 35 years, Lott quit this month, a year into his 6-year term. The timing of the special election is causing some friction in the state.

The state's Democratic attorney general wants the election held this spring, but Republican governor Haley Barbour is holding out for a November vote to aid his GOP ally. "I am a mainstream conservative in the mold of Trent Lott and Haley Barbour," Wicker said in his acceptance speech. "I believe the vast majority of Mississippians share this philosophy." (More Mississippi stories.)

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