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Bumpy Road for Vitter Campaign

Sue Lincoln

With five days till the election, Senator David Vitter’s campaign for governor appears to be in trouble. Four different polls in the past month show the presumed front-runner’s lead steadily eroding.

Then, last Thursday night, at the debate held at Louisiana Tech, Vitter said, “Baton Rouge is broken and dysfunctional, and there are no adult leaders there.”

An antagonistic statement, especially since over half the Legislature has been re-elected without competition, and one of Vitter’s main stated objectives involves a special legislative session shortly after taking office.

Yet it is part of Vitter’s platform. He repeated it in his closing that night, saying again, “Baton Rouge is broken.”

And it’s part of his latest campaign ad, featuring his wife, Wendy Vitter.

“David has the courage to stand up to the Baton Rouge politicians. He’s proven it,” she says in the ad.

But while that ad was airing multiple times during the LSU game Saturday night, social media was blowing up about video interview segments posted online by investigative blogger Jason Brad Berry.

“’Do you realize who you just seen?” I said no, and he goes, ‘That was your local state representative, Mr. David Vitter’.”

The woman speaking is Wendy Ellis, a.k.a. Wendy Cortez, an admitted prostitute who claims she was Vitter’s paramour from 1998 to 2000.

“I was 6 months pregnant whenever we ended our relationship,” she says in one of the video excerpts.

Ellis alleges Vitter was the father of her baby, which she ultimately put up for adoption. She further alleges he told her not to have it.

“You can sit there, walk across the grassy knoll, holding your wife and children’s hand, screaming ‘family values’, but you want me to go abort my baby?” Ellis exclaims during the interview.

The Vitter campaign, through a spokesman, has emphatically denied Ellis’s claims, saying there is “zero legitimacy” to the allegations.