VITTER BACK IN GOOD GRACES
(excerpt)

THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

Introducing David Vitter before a Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce breakfast event last week, Robbie Bush had high praise for the U.S. senator. The chamber chairman trumpeted Vitter as “an outspoken reformer,” someone “who has always been committed to putting Louisiana first” and a man who “stands for our mainstream values.” Vitter sat to Bush’s immediate right, in between two of Lafayette’s more prominent business leaders, longtime chamber President Rob Guidry and Kam Movassaghi, former state Department of Transportation and Development secretary who is now president of C.H. Fenstermaker & Associates. Prior to the start of the event, Vitter worked the room, stopping by each table, shaking hands and sharing well wishes. He drank coffee, ate little and sat quietly thinking over his talking points before getting up to address the room.

Just over a year after news broke about Vitter’s connections to a D.C. prostitution ring, threatening to halt his political career, it’s largely business as usual for Louisiana’s junior senator. With Congress in recess, Vitter is out making the rounds, renewing relationships while beginning to gear up for his re-election campaign in 2010. He appears reserved but maintains his earnest manner and repeatedly expresses a desire to listen to constituents’ concerns. His speeches are issues driven, focusing on the nation’s energy crisis and funding for major infrastructure needs like I-49 South.

City-Parish President Joey Durel says Vitter has been “a great friend to Lafayette,” assisting with key issues like the city’s challenge of FEMA’s recently redrawn flood maps, which included a number of large development areas in floodways, as well as Vitter’s continuing support for Lafayette Utilities System’s fiber-to-the-home initiative.

“From that standpoint, most of what I get from people I talk to is his support is still very strong,” Durel says. “It may be that the scandal has helped make him a little kinder and gentler in some ways. But I think overall, from a fiscal standpoint, basic conservative principles, he definitely represents this area very, very well.”