Oldest Senator Hospitalized
W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 2 -- Ailing Sen. Strom Thurmond has been hospitalized after slumping over on the Senate floor today following a vote.
Reporters and other observers were cleared from the area as fellow senators tended to Thurmond and medics headed to the scene. But the 98-year-old Republican, the nation's oldest and longest-serving senator, eventually smiled and waved to friends as he was taken out of the Senate in a wheel chair and put in an ambulance.
Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi told reporters Thurmond merely had been feeling faint and slumped over. His pulse remained good, Lott said, as Thurmond rested in the Senate cloakroom, just off the chamber floor, before being taken to a hospital.
Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, a doctor, ran out of a meeting across the hall and onto the Senate floor to treat Thurmond after hearing the news.
A congressional staffer said that amid the response Thurmond asked, "Are they making all this fuss over me?"
Thurmond, first elected in 1954, has been the subject of widespread health concern and has been hospitalized after suffering fainting spells in the past. Thurmond moves around the Capitol with the help of aides and has trimmed back his schedule in recent years.
He is not seeking re-election in 2002, but had pressed for the appointment of his estranged wife Nancy to take over the Senate seat if he is unable to serve out the rest of his term.
Balance of Power
Under South Carolina law, Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges would appoint a replacement — presumably, a Democrat — to serve out the remainder of Thurmond's term, which ends in January 2003.
Now that Democrats control the Senate, the prospect of replacing Thurmond is no longer quite the politically high-stakes situation it was back before Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the GOP. Democrats currently hold a 50-49-1 advantage in the Senate; a Hodges-picked Democratic replacement for Thurmond would change that to 51-48-1.
Thurmond had planned to retire at the end of his term, anyway, and both parties have certain nominees to replace him: Republicans have Rep. Lindsey Graham, and Democrats are fielding former College of Charleston president Alex Sanders. Because of the state's conservative tilt, Graham has been given the edge.
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