Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott has apologized for implying the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond won the presidency when he ran in 1948 on a segregationist ticket. Last week, Lott recalled how his home state of Mississippi voted for Thurmond when he ran on an anti-civil rights platform. “We’re proud of it,” Lott said at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, adding, “If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.” While Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle came to Lott’s defense, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and former Vice President Al Gore called for Lott to step down. Al Gore called his comments racist. Lott apologized, saying he used a poor choice of words that may have conveyed he embraced such policies of the past. He added, “Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement.” However, Lott has long had close ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which formed to succeed the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils of the 1960s. In 1992, Lott told members of the council, “The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let’s take it in the right direction, and our children will be the beneficiaries.”