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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
Rumors involving a prostitute and a secret alliance with neo-Nazi David Duke trail the Republican Senate candidate in Louisiana.
Oct 29, 2004 | A family-values far-right conservative named David Vitter appears headed for victory on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana. Sharp-edged and uncompromising, but enormously talented at self-promotion, the three-term Republican representative from suburban New Orleans has rocketed to prominence over the last decade despite opposition from the state's Republican power brokers.
Privately aghast at his rise, the state's GOP leaders have all but fallen in line now, afraid to cross the man who may be their next senator. In interviews with Salon over several days, many Louisiana Republicans expressed anguish that a Vitter victory next week could mark the end of the state's unique tradition of moderate, bipartisan politics. This, of course, is exactly what Vitter's breed of brash, Newt Gingrich-style Republicans believe a deeply polarized country needs -- conservatives who disdain common-sense compromise in pursuit of ideological purity. And so Louisiana Republicans are deeply unhappy that the 43-year-old lawyer, known for running slashing negative campaigns with under-the-radar help from white supremacist David Duke, is on track to become the first GOP U.S. senator from Louisiana in more than 100 years.
If Vitter wins more than 50 percent of the vote in Louisiana's unique multiparty open election on Tuesday, he will avoid a runoff and head directly to Washington. In a state where the other U.S. senator (Mary Landrieu) and the governor (Kathleen Blanco) are moderate, consensus-building Democratic women, the polarizing Vitter will become Louisiana's GOP standard-bearer.
While many Republican politicians and operatives see Vitter as duplicitous, and many African-American leaders call him racist, Louisiana's white conservative voters appear mostly beguiled. Based in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Vitter has won his last two congressional elections with more than 80 percent of the vote. He presents himself as a morally righteous, clean-cut family man, and his wife and three young children have become virtual campaign props. The Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar is also extremely intelligent, observers say, and runs perhaps the most effective political ads in the state. But there are hints of a dark side: allegations of an affair with a prostitute and a lawsuit claiming he lost his temper and physically charged at a woman at a town hall meeting.
Yet Vitter's increasing popularity and power have caused his once-vocal critics to retreat. The situation today is in stark contrast to five years ago, when virtually the entire state Republican establishment lined up against the young state representative in his successful bid for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Bob Livingston, a Republican who was forced to retire after revelations about his extramarital affairs.
In 1999, none of Vitter's future House colleagues showed up at his victory party, and few of his fellow state legislators did. "Vitter has such problems with people -- not just fringe politicians, but legitimate, honest politicians in the legislature who just can't stand him," Republican lawyer Rob Couhig, one of the candidates Vitter defeated for Livingston's congressional seat, told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call at the time. But today Couhig wouldn't dare repeat his earlier assertion. Like most other Louisiana Republicans, he now supports David Vitter.
There is one Republican who refuses to go quietly. He is a 78-year-old retired homebuilder from suburban New Orleans named John Treen, the brother of former Louisiana Gov. David Treen, a Republican whom Vitter defeated in the bitter 1999 congressional race. Saying he doesn't "give a damn" what Vitter thinks of him, Treen said his motivation for speaking up is simple: "I don't like liars."
David Treen was a pioneer in the state GOP who represented Louisiana in the U.S. House in the 1970s. He declined to comment on Vitter, as did other Louisiana Republicans contacted for this article. "Everyone is scared," John Treen told me. "You won't find anyone willing at this point to stick their neck out. No one wants to cross Vitter, because he has grown too powerful."
Vitter's spokesman, Mac Abrams, did not return phone calls seeking comment. Undoubtedly, though, his boss would argue that his critics are merely angry that changing political preferences have swept them aside. Or he would say the clubby, often corrupt, political establishment in Louisiana resents his outsider status and reformer's bent. "So many forces were against us. So many powers that be," Vitter said in his 1999 victory speech. "They had the politicians. We had the people. They've had the past, but we are the future."
Vitter grew up in a well-to-do family in New Orleans. After graduating from Harvard University, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship and earned a law degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He served in the Louisiana House from 1991 to 1999. A Catholic, he lives in Metairie with his wife, Wendy, and three small children.
In the state House, Vitter earned a reputation as a grandstander. He was known for sneakily calling solo press conferences -- sometimes just hours before his fellow Republicans had planned to make a joint announcement -- in order to take credit for group initiatives that he would pass off as his own. "We'd be on the floor debating controversial bills and he'd be on the radio criticizing us," one state Republican legislator, who declined to allow his name to be published, told me.
But Vitter also took on the state's notorious corruption, earning him extensive coverage from the news media. In 1993, he helped expose officials who were awarding lucrative Tulane scholarships to members of their own families. Taking advantage of a perk that dated to the 1880s, the officials -- including Livingston and Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, a Democrat -- had bestowed on their families tens of thousands of dollars in tuition savings.
Also, in 1993, Vitter filed an ethics complaint against Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards, which accused him of allowing his children to profit illegally from business with the state-regulated riverboat gambling industry. Edwards was later convicted in an extortion case involving riverboat gambling.
At the same time as he was racking up laudatory press coverage, though, Vitter was also getting a reputation in some quarters for a hot temper. At a Sept. 21, 1993, town hall meeting in Metairie, he got into a confrontation with a questioner that led to a lawsuit against him.
