WASHINGTON – Sen. Trent Lott’s decision not to take the majority leader’s post had been quietly backed by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, according to the two Maine Republicans.

Both senators had come under fire this week from the Portland branch of the NAACP, which criticized them for not doing enough to nudge Lott out on an issue so critical to the fabric of American politics.

“A clear statement must be made, not based on party politics, but based on human dignity and morality,” Portland branch president Winston McGill told The Associated Press earlier this week.

But Snowe countered Friday that the place to handle such a sensitive issue was behind the scenes, where the message may carry more weight. She said her record on civil rights “stands strong and tall.”

In a telephone interview from Portland, Snowe said, “I spent my time very actively engaged in pushing for the right decision to be made. A lot of this has to be addressed not in a public venue, but in background conversation.”

Snowe called it a “sad day, I guess,” nonetheless. “It’s a sad day because of the difficult decision that Senator Lott had made, and had to make, and he obviously had understood how the Republican conference and the Senate had to move together to advance the agenda of the country.”

Until Thursday night, Lott had been reiterating his determined view to stand for a vote of confidence at a planned Jan. 6 meeting of Republicans.

But the politics of such a vote played against Lott. In effect, Republican members had to go behind closed doors and affirm their allegiance to a man who had lost the public trust due to continued disclosures about his history of anti-civil rights positions.

At a news conference Friday afternoon in Bangor, Collins affirmed that Lott had made the right decision. Although she felt Lott’s apologies were sincere, she said, his attempts to explain his comments were not successful because there was no explanation that they could justify what he had said.

But the NAACP’s McGill said the lack of leadership from the two Republican senators played into the tensions that are affecting northern states like Maine as much as the Deep South.

He pointed out that the World Church of the Creator – which he described as a hate group – has scheduled a Jan. 11 rally against the influx of immigrants, primarily from Somalia, in Lewiston.

“We will be there as part of a counter-rally,” he said.

“I’m not going to knock the Republican Party, and I don’t feel that the Republican Party is a segregationist party,” McGill said. “But I’m glad to see that Lott has had the wisdom to step down, and to let the country move on beyond this.”

Collins does not feel Maine will be affected by Lott’s resignation in terms of policy or funding, but that his decision does send an important signal as far as what the Republican Party stands for.

“Our party is the party of Lincoln. It is the party that was funded on a commitment to racial equality and Senator Lott’s comments sent exactly the wrong message regarding the Republican Party,” she said.

Many senators, responding to the Lott decision, echoed the same sentiment, looking to choose the right words to express the fine line of tradition behind the philosophy of the GOP.

“It’s time now for us all to move forward and refocus our efforts on the legislative work that needs to be done for our country,” Collins said.

Snowe, the state’s senior senator, and one who is close to the Bush family, said she had several conversations over the past week with Lott, indicating that she expressed her concerns. Snowe would not detail whether Lott tried to lobby her for support or if she went so far as to call on him to reconsider his decision to fight to keep the role.

“We both recognized that everybody was having conversations to work through the myriad of issues in this complex and difficult question,” Snowe said. “But it was clear that a consensus was building.”