Claims to fame: Junior U.S. Senator from Louisiana; former U.S. House rep; anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-safe sex, abstinence-only crusader; anti-science creationist; anti-United Nations, warmongering globalist; anti-SCHIP gun nut; Southern regional chairman of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 Republican presidential campaign; real “family values” family man; hothead; adulterer; diaper-wearing hooker’s john
Moral apex: Lots of folks would say it was getting it on with hookers working for the “D.C. Madam,” or paying a Canal Street brothel $300 an hour for the privilege of wearing a diaper.
We say: neither. See, we have nothing against safe, sane sexual activity of any flavor of kink between consenting adults. We do, however, have a big problem with a self-righteous, moralizing hypocrite who demonizes gay and lesbian Americans under the guise of preserving the “sanctity of marriage” while trampling all over the sanctity of his own marriage… and then lying about it, repeatedly.
No, ’twasn’t the sex, nor the diapers; we say it was the continuous gay-bashing — followed closely by Vitter’s condemnation of Bill Clinton as “morally unfit to govern”… which, curiously, doesn’t seem to apply to Vitter himself in the strange, dichotomous world of “sin and redemption” theology.
Anyway…
“[T]o recap,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, “in Louisiana, Vitter carried on a year-long affair with a prostitute in 1999. Then he ran for the House as a hard-core social conservative family values candidate, parading around his wife and kids as props and leading the public crusade in defense of traditional marriage.
“Then, in Washington, he became a client of Deborah Palfrey’s.”
The Times-Picayune spelled out the details on July 10, 2007:
U.S. Senator David Vitter visited a Canal Street brothel several times beginning in the mid-1990s, paying $300 per hour for services at the bordello after he met the madam at a fishing rodeo that included prostitutes and other politicians, according to Jeanette Maier, the “Canal Street Madam” whose operation was shut down by a federal investigators in 2001.
After they met, Maier said Vitter became a customer at the Mid-City brothel. He made several visits, she said, but had stopped coming before federal agents raided the brothel.
. . .
At the New Orleans brothel, Maier said Vitter spent time with several women, but preferred one in particular named Wendy. She said all the girls that were with Vitter described him as a kind, respectful man, who did not talk down to them or use drugs.
Mary Ann Akers explains exactly how Vitter’s cover was blown: Dan Moldea, “the gumshoe Washington-based reporter who moonlights as an investigator” for Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, was working…
…to expose “hypocrites” on Palfrey’s client list.
. . .
When he got home with a CD rom of the phone records given to him by Palfrey’s attorney and started reverse checking all the thousands of numbers, he quickly grew weary and cross-eyed. It was a daunting task and it was getting late and still, no big names had surfaced.
. . .
Moldea tells us that he put the number he found on the Feb. 27 record through a reverse-search engine he was using, and the name popped up as “David Vitter.” He ran the name twice more through two other search engines and got the same result.
He sent an email to Flynt and telephoned him to say “I got one.” Flynt’s first question was, “Is he a hypocrite?” Moldea says he replied, “Just wait ’til you see this guy.”
Flynt, in a news conference from his office in Beverly Hills, said Vitter rose to his threshold of hypocrisy because he had campaigned on the sanctity of marriage and co-sponsored the federal marriage amendment to keep same-sex marriage illegal.
“He was to the right of Attila the Hun, every step of the way,” Flynt said, adding, “I don’t want a man like that legislating for me, especially in the areas of morality.”
If that isn’t enough to convince you that David Vitter is a slimeball to the nth degree, there’s always…
His frightening temper, resulting in an assault on a woman (and fellow Republican):
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.
Mercedes Hernandez, who was involved in Republican politics, testified that she frequently attended local meetings to engage officials on the issues, usually tape-recording the events. At a town hall meeting, Hernandez asked the state representative about a rumor she’d heard that he was supporting a gay-rights bill in the Legislature. Vitter became “enraged by her question, left the podium where he was standing, advanced toward her in a rapid, threatening manner, pushing aside chairs … and grabbed a portable tape recorder” that Hernandez was holding, according to her legal complaint.
In his legal filings, Vitter denied that he had assaulted Hernandez and instead accused her of trying to set him up by planting the false idea with other attendees that he supported gay rights, a position that is anathema in his religious conservative district. He further accused Hernandez of working with John Treen and his other political enemies by trying to shop a story about the incident to the media.
After a trial, a judge awarded Hernandez $50. “The court finds that Mr. Vitter’s demeanor changed when he saw the tape recorder. He became angry, agitated and excited,” the judge wrote. “He thought Ms. Hernandez was using her question [about gay rights] as a ruse to ’set him up’ and embarrass him.” But the judge also admonished Hernandez. “It appears that Ms. Hernandez was rather enjoying the political advantage she seemed to have perceived herself to have gained.”
His apparent ties to David Duke, and related dirty tricks:
The Vitter campaign sent fliers to black voters stating that the racist David Duke was supporting his opponent [David Treen]. In fact, Treen had been an enemy of Duke and had tried to stop his rise in Louisiana GOP politics. … But in what [David Treen’s brother John] believes was a secret pact between Duke and Vitter, the former Ku Klux Klansman came out publicly for his nemesis, Treen.
The effect was to suppress the black vote. Amid low turnout, Vitter eked out a victory with 51 percent. Curiously, though, the New Orleans area precincts that had supported Duke in the earlier phase of the race went not for Treen — whom the white supremacist had claimed to be supporting — but for Vitter. That was evidence, John Treen claims, that Duke’s supporters had secretly been rounding up votes for Vitter.
Fun facts:
• In a runoff election, Vitter replaced Bob Livingston when Livingston suddenly resigned his Senate seat after his extramarital dalliances came to light. (Thank you once again, Larry Flynt!)
• Vitter is one of the great Queens of Denial. Noted ABC News in mid-2007: “On Aug. 30, 2005, the day after Hurricane Katrina hit, Vitter erroneously told the public that, ‘In the metropolitan area in general, in the huge majority of areas, [the water is] not rising at all. It’s the same or it may be lowering slightly. In some parts of New Orleans, because of the 17th Street breach, it may be rising and that seemed to be the case in parts of downtown. I don’t want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That’s just not happening.’”
Memorable quotes:
Some current polls may suggest that people are turned off by the whole Clinton mess and don’t care — because the stock market is good, the Clinton spin machine is even better or other reasons. But that doesn’t answer the question of whether President Clinton should be impeached and removed from office because he is morally unfit to govern.
The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong — moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers (No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that “proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
I think Livingston’s stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess.
— David Vitter
on Bob Livingston’s resignation
to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 20, 1998
I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.
— Vitter’s wife, Wendy, to the Times-Picayune, 2000
…on whether or not she could forgive her husband for an extramarital affair (as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston’s wife had)
This wasn’t in response to any dramatic issue or event, but to the cumulative stress from working in a high-pressure job, living in two cities, building a house, raising four young kids including a newborn, having our campaign activities based at home and traveling the state considering running for governor.
…explaining why he and his wife had entered counseling for marital problems, and why he was abandoning a gubernatorial run… a week before he was forced to confront the Canal Street brothel allegations (which he denied, of course, calling the story “a rumor and attack campaign”)
(”The irony,” wrote Kos two and a half years later, “is that Vitter dropped out of that governor’s race last year because of an affair with a prostitute and has an illegitimate child with another woman. No big scoop — this is all out in the open and well-known in the state, yet Vitter is still running on a ‘family values’ platform and obviously getting away with it.”)
This is a real outrage. The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. Senators won’t do anything about it.
We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts’s values. I am the only Senate Candidate to coauthor the Federal Marriage Amendment; the only one fighting for its passage. I am the only candidate proposing changes to the senate rules to stop liberal obstructionists from preventing an up or down vote on issues like this, judges, energy, and on and on.
I’m proud to join Matt and the entire Alliance for Marriage in support of the Marriage Protection Amendment and other pro-family, pro-marriage initiatives that we are pursuing in the Congress. Matt, I think your group, including the representatives here today, illustrate what a broad and deep consensus this is in the country — that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. … Your group recognizes a central truth from throughout human history, that marriage is the most important social institution in human history and is the most significant factor in terms of minimizing all sorts of social ills. We go on the floor of the Senate and debate domestic problems, drug use, crime, illegitimacy, all of these things, and yet the single biggest factor in all of those problem areas is the single question: “Is there a mom and a dad at home helping bring up kids?”
I don’t believe there’s any issue that’s more important than this one. I think this debate is very healthy, and it’s winning a lot of hearts and minds. I think we’re going to show real progress.
— David Vitter
on the importance of a constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage
June, 2006
This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there — with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.
— David Vitter
July 9, 2007
Memorable pre-scandal observations:
On WSMB radio last Saturday, a caller who identified himself as Elwood asked Vitter about charges made by a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee in the Weekly that the then-State Representative had had an affair with a known prostitute in the French Quarter.
Elwood said, “Would you be willing to sign an affidavit that you have never known, met or had relations with one Wendy Cortez?”
Vitter responded, “I think you know that that allegation is absolutely and completely untrue…I have said that on numerous occasions… I’ll say that in any forum… Unfortunately, that’s just crass Louisiana politics, now that I am running for the Senate. I have made that clear that it is all completely untrue… And, it’s obviously politically motivated.”
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.
Louisiana Senator David Vitter, speaking at a Lafayette Parish Republican Executive Committee luncheon, referred to hurricanes Katrina and Rita coming through the same areas as a same-sex marriage.
In his statements at the luncheon, Vitter referred to the impact of both hurricanes on the Lafayette area. “Unfortunately, it’s the crossroads where Katrina meets Rita,” said Vitter. “I always knew I was against same-sex unions.”
. . .
In response to the comments by Vitter, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese sent the following letter to Vitter:
… Katrina and Rita caused devastation and despair for millions of Americans, including gay Americans. There simply is no way to make a joke out of this kind of disaster.
Either you need a new speechwriter, or your sense of humor is really off the mark. Your state is home to almost 9,000 same-sex families, according to 2000 U.S. Census data. These constituents also faced devastating losses caused by the hurricanes, and I doubt they found any humor in your jokes.
More than 1,100 rights, responsibilities and protections are denied to same-sex couples without the right to marry. That means the same-sex couples who lost loved ones in the hurricanes will be unable to receive Social Security benefits as other spouses will. They won’t get tax-free access to their spouses’ pensions. For families already facing hardships from the hurricanes, they have these obstacles and more to confront. The last thing they need is their elected officials mocking their misfortune.
At the very least, the people of Louisiana are due an apology.
Memorable post-scandal observations:
Vitter’s desire to use the law to impose his rock-solid traditional morality is not confined only to marriage. No, in general, he “[was] one of the most conservative Republicans in the House,” as he also “loathes gambling and rarely votes against his party or the president” (although his deeply moral opposition to gambling may be as authentic as his commitment to Traditional Marriage, given that his anti-gambling crusades were fueled in part by some Jack Abramoff money designed to attack some gambling interests in order to help Abramoff’s gambling clients).
. . .
David Vitter stands aside other Towering Icons of the Great Social Conservative Movement, those moral stalwarts who are defending The Institution of Traditional Marriage in our country — he stands with Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Fred Thompson, and Vitter’s chosen presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani…
. . .
As always, it is so striking how many Defenders of Traditional Marriage have a record in their own broken lives of shattered marriages, multiple wives and serial adultery. And they never seek to protect the Sacred Institution of Traditional Marriage by banning the un-Christian and untraditional divorces they want for themselves when they are done with their wives and are ready to move on to the next, newer model. Instead, they only defend these Very Sacred Values by banning the same-sex marriages that they don’t want for themselves.
Perhaps Vitter ought to revisit the issue of whether the absence of moral fitness is a firing offense for a public official.
If Deborah Jeane Palfrey is being prosecuted for racketeering, then, shouldn’t Vitter implicated as an enabler? What is good for the gander, is good for the goose.
It takes two to racket.
It is also a racket that the woman gets legally swatted but not the John, or the David.
To be clear I don’t have that much problem with the kind of services that Palfrey offered – prosecutors say that the brokered high-end prostitution, Palfrey claims that her employees offered BDSM-style “sex play.” That said, being illegal nearly everywhere and certainly in DC, paying for sex should ding the credibility of anybody whose job it is to write laws. I think in general that it’s silly to criminalize prostitution, but as long as legislators see fit to ban it for the rest of us they have a certain responsibility to respect the ban themselves. Legal “sex play,” bondage etc., really doesn’t bother me at all.
But there’s the rub: far more than for Democrats, Republicans put themselves forward as moral avatars, righteous defenders of the sort of theocratic values that gets their evangelical base warm and flushed. If an equal number of Democrats and Republicans turned up on Palfrey’s list the GOP base would find itself in a far more punishing mood than the Democrats’. I have little doubt that GOP pols will predominate (there were more of them during Palfrey’s time, they had more power and in my experience people who wear their piety on their sleeve are usually overcompensating). But even if they don’t, the devil’s bargain that Republicans made with the evangelical community ensures that the pain will be mostly theirs
But Tim, you have to understand. Dressing up like a school boy and getting a spanking from a woman in a nun’s habit wouldn’t be half as much fun if you didn’t first run around telling everyone else it is wrong, wrong, wrong, to dress up like school boys and get spankings from women in habits.
— Comment from “jake”
ibid.
In Louisiana yesterday, at least two state Republicans — one a columnist and statehouse candidate and the other a state party official and Vitter rival — were claiming vindication after Vitter’s admission.
In 2002, state GOP official Vincent Bruno charged on talk radio that Vitter had engaged in an extramarital affair.
Bruno told Christopher Tidmore, a political columnist for The Louisiana Weekly and a candidate for the state legislature, that Vitter had consorted for 11 months with a New Orleans prostitute who went by the name Wendy Cortez.
Tidmore told The Hill that other Republicans were aware of the alleged affair, adding that former Gov. Mike Foster (R) had used the information to dissuade Vitter from running for governor in 2001. At the time, Vitter said marital issues kept him from running.
After the allegations surfaced, Vitter attacked Tidmore and Bruno for engaging in “crass Louisiana politics,” adding that the charges were “completely untrue” and “obviously politically motivated.”
. . .
While talking to The Hill on the phone, Bruno took another call, which he said was from another state party official telling him not to talk to reporters about Vitter.
David Vitter has a long history of voting against the sexual freedom of other people, and against rights for loving, faithful families that center around two people who happen to be of the same gender. Vitter votes to deny homosexual couples equal marriage rights, using the excuse that homosexuality somehow threatens the sanctity of marriage. Yet, at the same time, Senator Vitter has been running around abusing the sanctity of his own marriage. Homosexuals were not to blame for that. David Vitter was to blame.
This year Senator Vitter voted against funding for a program to distribute contraceptives, and made the same excuse, saying that distributing contraceptives would encourage immoral sexual behavior. Well, in Senator Vitter’s case, I don’t see how condoms are responsible for sexual immorality. The birth control pill didn’t make David Vitter cheat on his wife.
The public offense of Senator David Vitter is not his extramarital affairs, or his use of prostitutes. That’s all between David Vitter, his wife, and the local police.
The public offense of Senator David Vitter is to deny equal rights under the law to many American families, and to refuse government support for programs that help people plan their families and maintain them in healthy ways. David Vitter’s offense is to promote an anti-family agenda, and placing it into the disguise of conservative Christian religion, all the while betraying the requirements of that religion.
Vitter has cheated on the American people. That’s the affair that matters.
Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Vitter:
But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:
I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
Filed under Vitter, David
