PASCAGOULA, Miss. AP – Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott announced Monday he will leave a 35-year career in Congress in which he epitomized the Republicans’ political takeover of the South after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Lott said he wanted to leave on a “positive note. He was first elected to Congress on the coattails of Richard Nixon’s re-election landslide in 1972 – with 72 percent of the vote in Mississippi.