In an expansive new feature by Politico that includes comments from a number of Republican lawmakers on The Hill who wish to remain anonymous due to the unusual frankness of their comments, Louisiana gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Sen. David Vitter is said to be drawing a lot of ire from those within his own party.
“Within the chummy confines of the U.S. Senate, Vitter has emerged as one of the most disliked members,” Politico reports. “The second-term senator’s effort to kill the federal health care contribution, worth several thousand dollars to lawmakers and their staffers, is a big part of it.”
For years, Vitter has crusaded to scrap health care subsidies for lawmakers and their staffers under the Affordable Care Act. While Vitter insists lawmakers and their aides are illegally exploiting a loophole in the Obamacare law, one of his fellow senators tells Politico the effort is “disingenuous.” Another says it’s obviously done “for political purposes.”
“But the two-year drive, his critics say, symbolizes an operating style that Vitter’s critics complain is consumed with public relations, even for an ambitious member of Congress: speeding in and out of meetings, railing about issues on the Senate floor but doing little to execute behind the scenes, firing off news releases left and right,” Politico reports. “In an institution in which the inside game is critical, Vitter doesn’t even pretend to bother with it.”
Vitter, a 54-year-old Rhodes scholar who earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard, is one of the more conservative members of the Senate GOP Conference. But his personal style—which Politico describes as “an unusual combination of brashness and standoffishness”—long has annoyed many of his cohorts, it says.
“He doesn’t really like to talk to members,” one GOP senator who asked not to be identified said of Vitter, who also does not engage with reporters in the halls of the Capitol.
