Wendy Vitter, abortion foe, confirmed for lifetime federal judicial seat based in New Orleans

Advocate, The (Baton Rouge, LA)

May 16-- May 16--WASHINGTON -- Wendy Vitter, the Louisiana native who once put aside an ambitious legal career to play political spouse to unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate and former Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter, is now a federal judge for life.

The U.S. Senate voted 52-45 on Thursday to confirm President Donald Trump's nomination of Vitter to a vacancy at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana based in New Orleans.

"I am honored and truly humbled by this confirmation," Vitter, 58, said in a statement after the vote. "I look forward to working hard at the job and serving with fairness, compassion, and integrity."

Vitter was first nominated to the post nearly a year and a half ago but regained momentum in recent months, despite a blowback from Democrats who criticized her anti-abortion views and reluctance to judge the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark segregation-busting Brown v. Board of Education decision during a committee hearing. No Democrats voted in favor of the nomination on Thursday. One Republican, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Vitter becoming a federal judge.

Both of Louisiana's Republican U.S. Senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, had championed her nomination through the process.

"She is immensely qualified to serve, and I wish her success in upholding the Constitution on behalf of the good people of the Eastern District," said Cassidy, Baton Rouge.

A day earlier, Cassidy responded to Democrats' attacks on Vitter saying it was "a shame the liberal left is using fabricated political smears to suppress the voice of a strong conservative woman." David and Wendy Vitter were instrumental to Cassidy's campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in 2014.

"Sen. David Vitter and Wendy helped us from the very beginning," then-U.S. Rep. Cassidy told his supporters after he toppled three-term incumbent Landrieu in a stunning 56-44 percent victory.

Kennedy, a Madisonville Republican who was elected to David Vitter's seat when the senator opted not to seek reelection after losing the governor's race, also praised the confirmation.

"Wendy is whip smart and articulate. She understands and appreciates the rule of law," Kennedy said.

David Vitter is now a lobbyist with Mercury LLC.

The American Bar Association, which grades all potential appointees to lifetime federal judicial appointments, rated Vitter as "qualified" but with a mark noting that the 15-member judicial panel wasn't unanimous in that assessment and at least a minority of the group found her to be unqualified.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, questioned Vitter's qualifications shortly before the vote Thursday, arguing she has "virtually no federal trial court experience."

Vitter, née Baldwin, graduated from the now-defunct Mercy Academy in New Orleans and holds a bachelor's degree from Sam Houston State University in Texas. She earned her law degree from Tulane in 1986.

A former Orleans Parish assistant district attorney, she has been general counsel to the Archdiocese of New Orleans since 2012.

Her anti-abortion rights track record and response to a question about Brown v. Board made her an especially contentious nominee, though.

Democrats took turn this week voicing concern about her a long history of anti-abortion activism including remarks she made at a 2013 protest at the site of a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic in Uptown New Orleans, accusing the group of killing "over 150,000 females a year," and her participation in spreading false claims of links between birth control and cancer. Both issues also were raised during hearings on her nomination at the committee level.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, included Vitter on his list Wednesday of examples of Trump nominees who are "hard-right ideologues who will do damage to this country for generations."

"We understand the president and Republicans will want conservatives, but hard-right, narrow ideologues who show no understanding or sympathy for people who don't look like them or pray like them or marry like them?" Schumer said. "It's not hard. If you need the benefit of hindsight to understand that Brown v. Board of Education, which brought an end to school segregation and led to the end of American apartheid, was correctly decided, you shouldn't be a federal judge."

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who follows the federal judiciary, said it was likely those positions that seemed to slow Vitter's confirmation process.

"It did take a long time, partly because she was considered to be relatively controversial," he said.

Tobias said it remains to be seen what kind of judge Vitter will be.

"She had a fair amount of experience in the state system in Louisiana, but not very much experience on the federal level," he said.

Louisiana residents are likely to be more familiar with the tough-talking, seemingly no-nonsense Wendy Vitter who proclaimed to reporters in 2000 while responding President Bill Clinton's affair scandal that she would be "a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary," referring to the Virginia woman who infamously severed her husband's penis in 1993.

Just seven years later, Wendy Vitter would herself end up party to a salacious politically-tinged extra-marital embarrassment when her husband David Vitter was linked via phone records to the infamous "D.C. Madam." The prostitution scandal tainted Vitter's political career through his 2015 gubernatorial campaign, at one point prompting Wendy Vitter to star in a television ad touting her husband's political bona fides and another in which David Vitter directly stated to the camera that he had "failed (his) family -- but found forgiveness and love."

Initial news of the infidelity in 2007 when a journalist found David Vitter's number in an escort service's call logs prompted a defiant, highly-publicized "stand-by-your-man" moment for Wendy Vitter, who by that time had already settled into life as a stay-at-home mom and part-time campaign surrogate for her husband.

"I stand before you to tell you very proudly, I am proud to be Wendy Vitter," she told the assembled reporters at the 2007 news conference, her husband at her side.

The Vitters have four children: Sophie, twins Lise and Airey, and Jack.

Wendy Vitter asked for her family's privacy without directly mentioning the prostitution allegations. The couple has not publicly addressed the episode in the years since, aside from Vitter's 2015 campaign ad.

During the 2007 spotlight, Wendy Vitter waved off comparisons between herself and Hillary Clinton, another lawyer who aided an ambitious husband's political career, suffered through a public infidelity scandal and would eventually go on to seek her own political appointment.

The Times-Picayune reported at the time that observers quickly dismissed the comparisons, "noting that Wendy Vitter did not have her own political ambitions in mind when she chose, as she put it, to recommit to the marriage."

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