Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer wants rename a Senate office building after Senator John McCain – an idea that appears to be gaining momentum after some of his colleagues agree with the proposal.
‘I want to be the first Republican co-sponsor for that resolution,’ Republican Senator Jeff Flake said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’
‘I think that that would be a fitting tribute. There are many other things that we need to do but that’s a good one. John McCain had his office just right near mine in the Russell building that’s where he was his entire time. I think that that’s a fitting tribute,’ he added.
Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to name a Senate office building after Sen. John McCain
Schumer proposed the idea shortly after McCain died on Saturday
Schumer said: ‘I’d like decades from now for little children to ask their parents who was John McCain’
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons agreed.
‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ he said on CNN Sunday morning.
Schumer proposed renaming the Russell Senate Office Building after McCain on Saturday, in the wake of the senator’s death.
‘Nothing will overcome the loss of Senator McCain, but so that generations remember him I will be introducing a resolution to rename the Russell building after him,’ he said in a statement.
‘I want generations in the Senate, and in the world, to remember him,’ Schumer said. ‘And I’d like decades from now for little children to ask their parents who was John McCain.’
The Russell Senate Office Building is the oldest Senate office building – it opened in 1909 – of the three structures that sit across the street from the U.S. Capitol building to house the senators’ offices.
It is named after the late Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia and it’s where McCain’s Senate office was located.
Russell was a Democrat from Georgia who served from 1933 to 1971. He was known as the senator’s senator.
But there have been unsuccessful efforts over the years to rename the building that bears his moniker because he was a staunch opponent of the civil rights movement and supported segregation. He would use parliamentary maneuvers to scuttle civil rights legislation like bills banning lynching and abolishing the poll tax.
Schumer’s proposal got support from other senators
The Russell Senate Office Building is the oldest of the three buildings that sit across the street from the U.S. Capitol building and house senators’ offices
Political fans would recognize the building’s rotunda from its numerous TV appearances. The Russell Rotunda is the area where senators give television interviews. On any given day the Senate is in session, TV cameras from every network are set up in the rotunda.
A statue of Sen. Russell also stands in the rotunda.
The building also contains the Kennedy caucus room – named that in 2009 in honor of Senators John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy.
The room has been the site of some of the most famous hearings in Senate history: the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic hearings; the 1974 Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra hearings, and the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings.