Majority Leader

WASHINGTON - Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi quit as Senate Republican leader yesterday, yielding to a political furor over his racially charged comments, and Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee quickly garnered enough support to become majority leader. Lott's abrupt resignation yesterday morning - after he had insisted for days that he would not surrender his post - opened the floodgates for public endorsements of Frist. The Tennesseean is a close ally of President Bush and is regarded as a presidential prospect.

WASHINGTON - Trent Lott, facing the first explicit call from a fellow Republican for him to resign as Senate majority leader, insisted yesterday that he had enough support to survive the racially charged outcry surrounding him and to keep his post. Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, one of his party's key moderates, became the first Republican in Congress to declare that Lott should step aside. "It's time for a change," Chafee said in an interview with WPRO-AM in Providence, R.I. "The only way to have a change, in my opinion, is for the White House to come in here and say to Majority Leader Trent Lott, `I think it's time for a change.

Although he says he is not trying to break any records, eight-term state Sen. Clarence W. Blount is all but assured of going down in Maryland's history books as a state legend. The 80-year-old Baltimore Democrat has served 31 years in the General Assembly, the longest of any African-American in the history of the legislature. Now with this year's state races drawing near, rumors abound over whether the legislature's first black majority leader will seek another four years representing West Baltimore's 41st District.

An influential Baltimore lawmaker threatened yesterday to kill a bill to change the date of the city's primary election unless city officials agree to "substantially" reduce the size of the City Council. Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, House of Delegates majority leader, said that though city officials say they need the election bill as a tool to increase voter turnout and save money, she doesn't think it will help with either. "I think it is a hoax, just to ask this committee to put the primary when you want it," McIntosh said during a hearing before the House Commerce and Government Matters Committee.

Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat, has become the first Maryland legislator to disclose that she is gay. McIntosh, the new House majority leader in Annapolis, has been a spokeswoman for legislation important to gays in the past, but she has not made those issues publicly personal in her nearly 10 years as a delegate. That changed in an October speech to the Women's Law Center of Maryland. McIntosh spoke about the state's new law to protect gays and lesbians against discrimination, which was then threatened with reversal by a possible referendum.

WASHINGTON - In a potential shake-up to national politics, House Majority Leader Dick Armey is telling congressional colleagues that he doubts he will run for re-election next year, one of the Texas Republican's closest confidants said yesterday. "Armey is considering not filing for re-election for next year's election and serving out his term in Congress in the next session as majority leader," he said. Armey spokesman Gayland Barksdale declined to comment. No announcement of Armey's decision has been scheduled.

LONG ABOUT cocktail hour, on the evening of Nov. 7, 1963, Tom Dodd of Connecticut took the floor of a nearly empty Senate to complain that the majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, was "not leading the Senate" and was compiling a "record of failure." Dodd yearned in a boozy voice for the days when Lyndon B. Johnson ran the Senate like an "orchestra leader" blending the sounds of his ensemble into a harmonious whole. That hilarious description of LBJ's cacophonous Senate was one of the least offensive things Dodd had to say. The minority leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen, another of Dodd's targets, ("soft.

For Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, the significance of her new job as majority leader of the House of Delegates is not the impressive title or the largely procedural duties on the floor. It's where she'll be when the House leadership hashes out its position on key issues. "The majority leader is always in the room when decisions get made," the Baltimore Democrat said this week. House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. named McIntosh, 53, to the majority leader post last month when the resignation of Del. Ron Guns to take a job on the Public Service Commission forced a reshuffle of the House leadership.

WASHINGTON - For Tom Daschle's first public appearance last week as the presumptive new Senate majority leader, he wore a face that looked not triumphant but rather uncharacteristically solemn - almost pained. "I wanted to be seen as serious," the 53-year-old South Dakota Democrat explained later. "This is a somber time. I was a little disappointed that I was described the day before as giddy. This is serious. We have a great responsibility." But earlier, when he had first learned that Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont was leaving the Republican Party, thereby throwing Senate control to the Democrats, Daschle was, in fact, past giddy, friends said.

Roy Neville Staten, the old-line Dundalk political boss who as state Senate majority leader played a key role in Maryland legislative battles throughout the 1970s, died at a local nursing home Saturday of heart problems. He was 86.Mr. Staten had a storied career in Maryland politics, starting as the Depression-era chauffeur of Maryland Gov. Albert C. Ritchie and rising to become majority leader and power broker for figures such as former Gov. Marvin Mandel."Whenever there was any problem, I would call on him," said Mandel, who at one time appointed Mr. Staten to head the state's Democratic Party.