WASHINGTON – Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a hard-charging surgeon who is a favorite with the Bush administration, is poised to become the next Senate majority leader, succeeding Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

Fellow Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins both wholeheartedly support Frist for the position.

For hours Friday, the politics played out as first one and then another potential opponent worked the phones to determine if there was hope to wage a formal challenge. But the decision late in the afternoon by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to back Frist gave him a race without an opponent. Other possible candidates, including Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., the first man to call for Lott to stand down, also backed Frist.

Relatively unknown, Frist, 50, was a practicing surgeon for more than 14 years, and is known to have cast his first vote at age 36 – making him an unlikely leader of a body that often is enmeshed in the minutiae of political maneuvering and parliamentary procedure. Still, he is representative of key issues – concentrating on health care and education. And he has the ear of the president, having been Bush’s unofficial “Senate liaison” in the 2000 presidential campaign.

“I hope that it is by acclamation,” Snowe said of the possibility of a leadership vote. She said she talked to Frist on Friday “and would wholeheartedly back his bid to become the Senate majority leader.”

Snowe said Frist has “certainly demonstrated his capability as chairman of the [National Republican Senatorial] Committee,” which he headed in the 2002 election cycle. “He has the capacity to unite the conference.”

However, Frist is not without his detractors – including an inquisitive media that quickly jumped on the fact that many of Frist’s votes in recent years on critical civil rights issues have mimicked those cast by Lott.

CNN Crossfire co-host Bob Novak, a noted conservative pundit in Washington, D.C., said there is the impression by some senators that Frist had acted “too much like a White House staffer” in his conduct on the campaign committee.

“He is viewed not as being a leader of the Senate Republicans but as the president’s man in the Senate,” Novak said Friday afternoon on CNN. “There is some concern that senator Frist won’t be independent enough.”

During a news conference in Bangor on Friday afternoon, Collins announced her plans to support Frist as majority leader.

Collins served alongside Frist on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the previous Congress, and worked with him on the No Child Left Behind Act that was passed last January.

As a physician, Frist will bring a great deal of expertise to health care issues that will be at the forefront of the new Congress, Collins said.

Snowe said given the difficult and unprecedented circumstances, “I would hope that we would rally around and unite on the candidacy of Frist. These are wrenching circumstances for the Republican Conference; it’s time to reconcile the differences and heal the wounds.”

Republicans have decided to schedule a telephone conference meeting on Monday to determine if they can give Frist a quick boost into the top job, even though Lott said he would not formally stand down as the current Senate Republican leader until Jan. 6.