Vitter won’t seek Senate re-election after losing Louisiana governor race

The lieutenant governor leads Louisiana’s Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and serves as the figurehead for the state’s $11 billion tourism industry.

Vitter said he is excited about “starting a new chapter in my professional life” after he leaves the Senate.

Voters’ rejection of Vitter was a stunning turn of events for the US senator, long a political powerhouse in the state.

While Vitter’s loss is a setback for Republicans, and provides a boost to Democrats ahead of the 2016 elections, there is a silver lining as well: Edwards ran, and won, on a conservative message. But some conservative voters peeled away from the party in the runoff election, encouraged by the Republican supporters (including Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who endorsed Edwards after finishing behind Vitter in the primary) that Edwards touted on the campaign trail. The U.S. senator also was hampered by high disapproval ratings for his fellow Republican, Jindal, who is blamed for the state’s financial problems. As fruitless as that effort often was, it seemed to clarify what his pitch would be in a governor’s race.

Had the defeated Vitter, a Republican, made a decision to seek re-election to the Senate, his choice would have raised more questions than it would answer.

Vitter told dejected supporters he would leave politics next year, choosing not to run for another term in the U.S. Senate. Edwards’ campaign wasn’t shy about often reminding voters of Vitter’s ties to a prostitution scandal in 2007, when phone records linked him to Washington’s “D.C. Madam”. “Make no mistake, Louisiana is a deep red state and our Republican brand is strong”, Republican Party of Louisiana Chairman Roger Villere said in a statement. Polling this fall from both Morning Consult and the University of New Orleans showed Jindal to be wildly unpopular even among Louisiana Republicans, and it’s likely that this carried over to the race to succeed him.

U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, who represents the Lafayette and Lake Charles area, wants the position and has been traveling Louisiana over the past couple of months.

He also leveraged his appointment to West Point, where he became an Army Ranger before returning to Louisiana to raise his family. Noting the nastiness of the campaign in his victory speech, Mr Edwards said voters in Louisiana had “chosen hope over scorn, over negativity and over the distrust of others”.

After a brutal, attack-heavy competition to win the office, Edwards will get little in the way of a honeymoon as he readies to follow term-limited Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal into office. In the runoff, as money began pouring into the race, Edwards proved adept on offense, hitting Vitter hard on the prostitution scandal and keeping the focus on personality over party.

Edwards benefitted from a bipartisan revolt in the capitol: There is an “us against them” atmosphere of young gubernatorial aides dictating policies on Jindal’s terms, a politics of winners and losers, no holds barred.

The Republican Governors Association tried to use this fact to associate Edwards with President Barack Obama (who Edwards has never met), but as we can see from tonight’s election results, that dog simply wouldn’t hunt this time.