50-50 Chance of GOP Holding Senate Majority

For the average 98-year-old man, the chances of living to be 100 are 46.5 percent, according to Edward W. Frees, Chair of the Actuarial Science department at the University of Wisconsin business school. Of course, Sen. Thurmond is not your average 98-year-old.

The question of who will control the Senate for the next two years is amusingly convoluted. Following the November election, the Senate was split 50-50 between the parties. However, the GOP enjoys the advantage no matter who wins the presidency. If George W. Bush triumphs, a Vice President Dick Cheney, as president of the Senate, would possess the tie-breaking vote.

This would give the Republicans an effective 51-50 margin. If Al Gore wins, a Vice President Joe Lieberman would have to resign his Senate seat. The Republican governor of Connecticut would then almost certainly appoint a Republican to replace Lieberman, giving the GOP a 51-49 margin.

However, a Republican Senator's resignation or death could end this tiny GOP advantage. One ploy sure to attract the interest of the next president would be, under the guise of promoting bipartisanship and national healing, to offer a Cabinet post to a senator from the other party, ideally one from a state with a governor from the new president's party. This stratagem for controlling the Senate might be a little too obvious, though.

Death could also rearrange the balance. Back in the days when the senatorial lifestyle revolved around bourbon, T-bone steaks and cigars, Senators used to die like flies. Thirty-four sitting Senators dropped dead between 1950 and 1969. From 1980 through 1999, however, only eight passed away. That's less than one per two-year term.

Much of what little attention Washington can spare for anything outside Florida is ghoulishly focused on Strom Thurmond's survival prospects.

If Thurmond, who has won eight senatorial election campaigns, dies or is forced to retire before the end of his term in early January 2003, then the Democratic governor of South Carolina would get to appoint a Democrat to the Senate to take his seat for the rest of his current term.

Assuming no other changes in the Senate, Thurmond's demise would give the Democrats a 51-49 advantage if Bush were president. Or, if Gore were president, then a Vice President Lieberman would provide the Democrats with a 51-50 voting edge.

Although he has been hospitalized several times for exhaustion and dehydration, Thurmond, the greatest survivor in American politics, does not intend to die at any time that would suit the convenience of the Democratic Party that he left back in 1964. A lifelong nondrinker and fitness buff, he still exercises daily and gives his legendary finger-crushing handshake known to its victims as "the Grip."

The word "Senator," like "senile," comes from the Latin word "senex," meaning "elder" or "old man." Although Thurmond, the oldest man ever to serve in Congress, is the living embodiment of that etymology, he's always been particularly youthful for his age. Most famously, at the age of 66 he married a 22-year-old beauty queen and proceeded to father four children.

Before that, at the advanced age of 43, Thurmond parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne.

In 1957, he set the Senate filibustering record by speaking nonstop for over 24 hours against a civil rights bill.

Yet, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally guaranteed South Carolina's African Americans the right to vote, Thurmond nimbly changed his tune. He quickly began hiring blacks as staffers and appointing them to important positions. Since then, this flexible old man has tended to draw a higher share of the black vote than most other Southern Republicans.

So, the Democrats cannot count on Thurmond to go gently into that good night anytime soon.