A Vitter Pill For GOP: Dems Take Governor’s Mansion in Louisiana

Vitter was considered such a safe bet that many state Democrats figured the race was a lost cause and paid little notice to the Edwards campaign, which for most of its life consisted of the candidate and his wife, some other relatives, a single staff member and a few informal advisers.

Democrat John Bel Edwards of Amite was elected the next Louisiana Governor by collecting approximately 56 percent of the vote in a runoff election with Republican David Vitter of Metairie Saturday.

With 1,800 out of 3,945 precincts reporting, Edwards led Vitter 55 percent to 45 percent, prompting the Edwards campaign to declare victory late Saturday.

The senator even sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Secretary of State John Kerry saying – inaccurately, according to state police and Catholic Charities – that there was a missing Syrian in Louisiana.

Edwards is socially conservative, but that’s to be expected of Democratic candidates in red regions like the Deep South. Like me, he was a Democratic delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte for Barack Obama. The rebuke from Louisiana voters will create an open Senate seat for the 2016 election.

But Vitter was hit with repeated attacks for a 2007 prostitution scandal in which he apologized for a “serious sin” after he was linked through phone records to Washington’s “D.C. Madam”. Soon after, a private investigator working for the Vitter campaign was arrested after surreptitiously filming a group of men at a cafe outside New Orleans – a gathering that included another private investigator, one who had tracked down the escort in the online video.

Edwards has kept the runoff election squarely focused on Vitter’s character, contrasting it with his own.

“As for me, I’m eager to refocus on the important work of the United States Senate, but I’m only going to be doing that for one more year”. Charles Boustany and John Fleming.

Edwards, an anti-abortion, pro-gun Democrat, will replace Jindal, who is unpopular in his state and barred by term limits from seeking re-election. The new residents of Plano, The Woodlands, Katy and Round Rock, Texas, Peachtree City, Georgia, Glendale, Arizona and Olive Branch, Mississippi, as well as other locales in the soon-to-be-growing Louisiana diaspora, will be snickering in relief over the next four years. He described himself as committed “to materially change the direction of our state, to move in a new and better direction, to be the governor of all the people whether or not they voted for me”.

The Washington Post also reported an acrimonious feud between Jindal, who recently ended his presidential campaign, and Vitter, whom Jindal refused to endorse, helped secure Vitter’s political demise.

Edwards is taking over a state awash in financial problems. Given Edwards stellar performance this evening, Landrieu may consider the Senate more seriously, now that a Democratic statewide victory appears more plausible.

Charges and counter-charges involving thugs, terrorists, prostitutes and spies have dominated the raucous final stretch of a Louisiana governor’s race that, just three months ago, was a ho-hum affair.

Edwards is allied with two of the state’s traditional Democratic power centers: the teachers unions and the trial lawyers. “I will always be honest”, he said.