David Bruce Vitter (born May 3, 1961) is an American politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana from 2005 to 2017. A member of the Republican Party, Vitter served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1992 to 1999 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2005.
Vitter was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was the first Republican to represent Louisiana in the Senate since the Reconstruction Era, and the first ever Republican to be popularly elected. In 2007, Vitter admitted to and apologized for past involvement with prostitution as a client of a Washington, D.C. escort service. Despite Vitter's disclosure, he was re-elected to the Senate in 2010; however, the disclosure is believed to have played a part in his loss of the 2015 gubernatorial election. Vitter ran for governor to succeed the term-limited Bobby Jindal in the 2015 gubernatorial election, losing the general election to Democrat John Bel Edwards. While conceding defeat to Edwards, Vitter announced that he would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2016 and would retire from office at the completion of his term. Following the conclusion of his second Senate term, Vitter became a lobbyist.
David Bruce Vitter was born on May 3, 1961, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the son of Audrey Malvina (née St. Raymond) and Albert Leopold Vitter. Vitter graduated in 1979 from De La Salle High School in New Orleans. While a student at De La Salle, Vitter participated in the Close Up Washington civic education program. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1983; a second B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1985, as a Rhodes Scholar; and a Juris Doctor degree in 1988 from the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. He was a practicing lawyer, and adjunct law professor at Tulane and Loyola University New Orleans.
Vitter and his wife Wendy, a former prosecutor, have four children. Vitter's brother Jeffrey is a computer scientist who served as chancellor of the University of Mississippi from January 2016 to January 2019.
Louisiana House of Representatives
Vitter was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1992 to 1999.
Vitter has argued for ethics reform and term limits since he was in the Louisiana Legislature in the early 1990s. As a Louisiana state legislator, Vitter successfully pushed through a term limits amendment to the state constitution to oust the largely Democratic legislature. The first election legislators affected by the reform occurred in 2007. In order to leverage the term limits advantage in that election, Vitter formed a Political Action Committee with the goal of winning a legislative Republican majority. While the Republicans saw gains, the Democrats maintained majority control.
Vitter opposed gambling during his tenure in the Louisiana House.
United States House of Representatives
Vitter won a special election to Louisiana's 1st congressional district in 1999, succeeding Republican U.S. Representative Bob Livingston, who resigned after disclosure that he had committed adultery. In the initial vote on May 1, 1999, former Congressman and Governor David C. Treen finished first with 36,719 votes (25 percent). Vitter was second, with 31,741 (22 percent), and white nationalist David Duke finished third with 28,055 votes (19 percent). Monica L. Monica, a Republican ophthalmologist, had 16 percent; State Representative Bill Strain, a conservative Democrat, finished fifth with 11 percent; and Rob Couhig, a Republican lawyer and the owner of New Orleans's minor league baseball team, garnered 6 percent. In the runoff, Vitter defeated Treen 51–49 percent.
In 2000 and 2002, Vitter was re-elected with more than 80 percent of the vote in what had become a safe Republican district.
In 2001, Vitter co-authored legislation to restrict the number of physicians allowed to prescribe RU-486, a drug used in medical abortions. The bill died in committee.
In 2003, Vitter proposed to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. In 2004, he said, "This is a real outrage. The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history...We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts values."
In 2002, Vitter was preparing to run for governor in 2003, with the incumbent, Republican Mike Foster, prevented by term limits from running again. But in June 2002, shortly before the Louisiana Weekly reported on a claim from Vincent Bruno, a campaign worker for Treen in 1999, about Vitter's alleged relationship with a prostitute, Vitter dropped out of the governor's race, saying he and his wife were dealing with marital problems.
Bruno said on a New Orleans–based radio show that he had been told by a prostitute that she had interactions with Vitter. However, Treen and his campaign decided to not publicize this information during the election.
In 2004, Vitter ran to replace Democrat John Breaux in the United States Senate.
During the campaign, Vitter was accused by a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee of having had a lengthy affair with a prostitute in New Orleans. Vitter responded that the allegation was "absolutely and completely untrue" and that it was "just crass Louisiana politics."
On November 2, 2004, Vitter won the jungle primary, garnering a majority of the vote, while the rest of the vote was mostly split among the Democratic contenders.