David Vitter: The Rhodes Scholar, the Senator, and the D.C. Madam

The Rhodes Scholar and the D.C. Madam

David Vitter's résumé reads like it was designed in a laboratory to produce a United States Senator. Born in New Orleans in 1961. De La Salle High School. Bachelor's degree from Harvard. Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. Law degree from Tulane. Adjunct professor at both Tulane and Loyola. Married to a former prosecutor. Four kids. He was the whole package — the kind of candidate that political consultants dream about — and for a while, it all worked exactly as planned.

Vitter entered Louisiana politics in 1992, winning a seat in the state House of Representatives where he championed ethics reform and term limits. He was a conservative's conservative, a family values Republican who spoke passionately about personal responsibility and moral standards. When Bob Livingston resigned from Congress in 1999, Vitter won the special election to replace him, beating former Governor David Treen in a tight runoff. He was thirty-eight years old and already on the fast track.

In 2004, Vitter made the jump to the Senate, becoming the first Republican in Louisiana history to be popularly elected to that body. It was a genuine achievement. Louisiana had been sending Democrats to the Senate since Reconstruction, and Vitter broke through by combining conservative social positions with enough New Orleans sophistication to appeal across the state. He was mentioned as potential presidential or vice-presidential material. The future was wide open.

Then, in July 2007, a phone number was published. It belonged to David Vitter, and it appeared in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey — the so-called D.C. Madam, who ran a high-end escort service in Washington. The same David Vitter who had built his career on family values and moral standards had been a client.

Vitter held a press conference with his wife Wendy at his side and issued a statement acknowledging a "serious sin" and asking for forgiveness. He didn't resign. He didn't disappear. He stayed in office, weathered the storm, and in 2010 won reelection to the Senate by a comfortable margin. Louisiana voters, it turned out, were willing to forgive — or at least to shrug.

The survival was remarkable. Bob Livingston, whose seat Vitter had inherited, resigned over similar revelations. But Vitter calculated differently. He bet that voters cared more about policy than personal behavior, that a sincere-seeming apology and a supportive wife standing beside you was enough, and that Louisiana had seen too many colorful politicians to get worked up over one more. He was right.

Vitter served in the Senate until 2017, focusing on immigration, energy policy, and conservative causes. He ran for governor in 2015 but lost to John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who used the prostitution scandal effectively in campaign ads. It was the one election where the past finally caught up.

After leaving the Senate, Vitter moved into lobbying, joining a firm that represented international clients. The Rhodes Scholar from De La Salle had come full circle — from the heights of academic achievement to the heights of political power to the particular kind of Washington afterlife where former senators trade on their connections.

David Vitter's story is a New Orleans story because this city has always understood that people are complicated. The same person can be brilliant and foolish, principled and hypocritical, a Rhodes Scholar and a cautionary tale. New Orleans doesn't demand that its public figures be saints — it never has — but it does eventually demand that they be interesting. On that count, at least, Vitter delivered.