Sen. Trent Lott announces retirement

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trent Lott, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, said on Monday he will retire, ending a 34-year career in Congress in which he became a powerful conservative figure.

"I am announcing today that I will be retiring from the Senate by the end of the year," Lott, a former college cheerleader, said in his hometown of Pascagoula, Mississippi.

"Let me make it clear, there are no (health) problems. I feel fine. I may look my 66 years, but I honestly feel good."

Lott made a remarkable political recovery from a gaffe in 2002 that cost him his position as Senate majority leader.

At a 100th birthday celebration for then-Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who ran unsuccessfully for president as a racial segregationist in 1948, Lott was quoted saying that Mississippians were proud to have voted for Thurmond for president and that "if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years."

President George W. Bush and then-Sen. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, were said to have helped nudge Lott out of his leadership job. On Monday, Bush had only kind words for Lott, saying "his immense talent will be missed in our nation's capital."

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is expected to pick a fellow Republican to take the seat until the next congressional and presidential election in November 2008, when Barbour said he would call a special election.

The conservative state's other senator, Thad Cochran, is also a Republican and is running for re-election next year.