BATON ROUGE – Sen. David Vitter took time away from his apparently endless corporate fundraising efforts today to formally qualify for the governor’s race, and immediately fell back on old habits and dishonesty when questioned about his record. In his feeble efforts to re-write history, Vitter attempted to claim a concrete record of bipartisan accomplishment that does not exist. Accomplishments of any sort are in thin supply on Vitter’s resume, which is overstuffed with grandstanding and Washington in-fighting and lacks any real success for the Louisiana taxpayers he was elected to serve.
As noted by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, even after more than a decade of leeching public funds as a creature of Washington, Vitter has been “wholly ineffective” in delivering needed resources for his constituents. Despite the obscene amounts of corporate cash that have been funneled into his campaign by out-of-state special interests, and despite the high name recognition enjoyed by a senator who is no stranger to headline news or late-night punch-lines, the putative front-runner in the governor’s race has yet to secure the endorsement of his own state party.
“We all have a very clear picture of what a Vitter administration would look like if he managed to buy his way into the governor’s mansion,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “Vitter’s failures and his dishonesty are a matter of public record. The claim he made today is only the most recent example of why we can’t afford to trust him.”
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