On Tuesday, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) announced via email that he will run for Governor of Louisiana in 2015. Current GOP darling Bobby Jindal cannot run again due to term limits. Vitter will be allowed to retain his seat in the US Senate while he runs and will only have to give it up if he wins. He is not up for reelection in the Senate until 2016.
Besides sending out an email to his supporters on Tuesday, Vitter launched a new campaign website and posted a video announcing his decision:
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Vitter, of course, is most noted for his involvement in the ‘D.C. Madam’ scandal, as his phone number was found among the records of a Washington, D.C. prostitution service during a bust in 2007. It was reported that he apparently liked to wear diapers when visiting with his favorite hookers. He did not resign, nor did the Republican Party pressure him to. It appeared that the main reason they decided to forgive the so-called ‘family values’ Senator was that the Governor of Louisiana at the time was a Democrat, and it was likely that she’d appoint a Democrat to replace Vitter.
That incident wasn’t the only time that Vitter had his name associated with prostitutes. When he was thinking about running for governor in 2003, the Louisiana Weekly ran a story stating that Vitter had visited with a prostitute. Rather than deal with the messiness of the story going wide, Vitter dropped out of the race, stating he was having family problems. Instead, he regrouped and ran for the US Senate in 2004, winning easily as he got the benefit of multiple Democratic candidates running. The prostitution story went away quietly during the campaign.
Despite his indiscretions and hypocrisy, Vitter will go into this race as the heavy favorite. He will be able to slough off the prostitution mess by constantly declaring his love for guns, God and America. It also will help that he is pro-life, against same-sex marriage and extremely conservative around the issue of immigration. The other candidates that have declared are current Republican Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne and the Democratic State Rep. John Bel Edwards. However, Vitter already has a SuperPAC that has raised nearly $2 million for his candidacy, not to mention whatever other money he has raised personally.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
