Zell Miller

Zell Bryan Miller (born February 24, 1932) is a politician from Georgia. He was lieutenant governor of Georgia from 1975 to 1991, governor from 1991 to 1999 and United States senator since 2000. His successor as governor, Roy Barnes, appointed him to the Senate seat following the death of the Republican senator Paul Coverdell in July 2000, and Miller won a special election to keep the seat in November 2000. Since Coverdell won his last election in 1998, Miller has a four-year term and would face election in 2004, but he decided to retire.

During the 1950s, Zell Miller served in the United States Marine Corps. This had a profound effect on his life. He wrote a book about the values that his experiences there taught him.

Though Miller is a Democrat, Miller has increasingly been seen as a conservative, especially since taking his Senate seat in 2000. Though he saw the Democratic party's complete control of Georgia fall apart during his time as lieutenant governor and governor, he has always remained popular and won his elections easily, showing his ability to please most members of both parties in Georgia. On the other hand, he has always refused Republican offers to join their party, remaining loyal to the Democrats. During 2001 and 2002, when liberal Republican senators from New England such as James Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee threatened to, and, in Jefford's case, did, leave the Republican party, rumors abounded that Miller would become a Republican and give control of the Senate back to that party. These rumors, were, however, always denied. In 2003, he announced his retirement from politics, saying that he would finish his term in the Senate but not seek reelection. He also announced that he would be supporting George W. Bush in the presidential election rather than any of the nine candidates then competing for the nomination of his own party, though he again denied that he would officially become a Republican.

Even more recently, he has become known for his comments including calling rap music "crap" on the Senate floor, and advocating the abolition of the 17th Amendment, which would revoke the right of the people of each state to elect their senators, and give the choice back to the state legislatures as it was prior to the amendment. In 2004, Miller became even more distant from his fellow Democrats when he refused to attend their national convention and announced that was slated to formally address the 2004 Republican National Convention, though he is still nominally a Democrat. Several Democratic leaders, however, have publically stated that Miller is no longer a real Democrat.

Miller's criticisms of the Democratic party, in his book A National Party No More are stated with the presumption that the Democrats have lost their majority because they have decided that they do not care for the South. He glosses over the real policy changes in the Democratic party that have diverged from Southern politicals and the historical reasons for it. Miller's real complaint about his fellow Democrats is that he disagrees with their policy positions (positions he agreed with as recently as his 1992 speech at the Democratic National Convention), but he couches it in the language of anti-Southern bigotry.

Books

By Zell Miller:

• (November 2003)
• , also by Robert E. Allen (October 1999)
• They Heard Georgia Singing
• Great Georgians
• Mountains Within Me
• foreword to by Dick Parker (2003)

About Zell Miller:

External links

• Official website
• Project Vote Smart - Political Profile
• Commentary on A Majority Party No More: [1]

Preceded by: Joe Frank Harris

Governors of Georgia

Succeeded by: Roy Barnes