GOP wave helps Louisiana Republican rebound

One Sunday evening over the summer, Republican Sen. David Vitter delivered the readings during Mass at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, as he occasionally has done for years.

But his appearance on the altar, during a political season in which he was trying to shake the tarnish of a prostitution scandal, may have struck some churchgoers as noteworthy.

“I’m sure he’s looking for redemption,” said Billy Stevens, a Metairie resident who attended the service.

Vitter’s studied campaign to repair his shredded image appears to be paying dividends and confounding Democratic hopes of toppling even one sitting Republican senator in the midterm election.

Not a single GOP senator is expected to lose to a Democrat this fall, experts say. Vitter was once considered the most vulnerable Senate Republican after disclosures in 2007 that his name was listed in the phone book of a Washington, D.C., madam, who later committed suicide.

But the rising conservative tide that is favoring GOP candidates nationwide is lifting even this most endangered one. Polls show Vitter maintaining a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, third-term Rep. Charlie Melancon from the state’s southern bayou region.

The only incumbent Republican senators expected to fall this election cycle are the ones who already have — those who lost primaries to conservative “tea party” candidates. Such a fate befell Sen. Bob Bennett in Utah and Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, where she is waging a write-in campaign.

How a senator linked to a dead madam could rebound politically has as much to do with Vitter’s disciplined campaign in his unique state as it does the sour national mood.

Vitter, elected in 2004 after serving in the House, was the first Republican senator from Louisiana since Reconstruction.

In 2007, the operator of a Washington escort service who was facing criminal charges released her voluminous client list, which included Vitter. In 2008, after she was convicted of prostitution-related charges, she hanged herself in Florida.

When the client list was released, Vitter, now 49, quickly admitted to committing a “serious sin,” then went to work mending ties with an electorate that was receptive to his brand of conservative Republican politics.

Vitter introduced legislation on hot-button issues — tightening requirements for abortion providers, barring citizenship to children of illegal immigrants, prohibiting flag burning. He shored up his conservative base and easily swatted back a primary challenge.

His latest ads attempt to tie Melancon to President Obama’s agenda, even though the congressman voted against the healthcare overhaul and other signature Democratic bills. One ad that features an unflattering portrayal of illegal immigrants sneaking across the border has drawn criticism from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana.

Vitter did all this while mostly clamming up. He rarely stops to chat in the Capitol. His news conferences are few. He celebrated his primary victory at home.

Vitter’s low profile has been so closely watched as a strategy in Washington that it has become a verb — to “pull a Vitter.”

Melancon is not giving up without a fight, and recently began airing a TV ad that stages a reenactment of a prostitution scene.

“There are a lot of questions that have never been answered,” Melancon said in a recent interview.

Melancon’s internal polls show him narrowing the gap to single digits. To win statewide, he hopes to convince voters of his independent streak — “I am not a West Coast liberal,” he said — and peel away female voters, especially after one of Vitter’s male aides resigned in June after what was reported as an altercation related to a domestic relationship.

Pearson Cross, chairman of the political science department at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, sees in Vitter’s rebound evidence that Louisiana is joining its Southern neighbors in becoming a Republican-dominated state.

Outside of the state’s Democratic strongholds, including New Orleans, voters care little for Obama. The president’s approval rating among Louisianans hovers in the mid-30s, his standing bruised in part by the BP oil spill and the administration’s now-lifted moratorium on offshore drilling.

“We’re becoming more like the rest of the South,” Cross said.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com