Louisiana Congressman’s Family Values Include Kissing Young Female Staffers

McAllister

Louisiana Congressman Vance McAllister found himself in a bit of trouble yesterday:

Freshman GOP Rep. Vance McAllister of Louisiana — who ran for office as a principled conservative Christian — has been caught on video in a romantic encounter with a woman believed to be on his congressional staff just before Christmas.

The Ouachita Citizen, a newspaper based in West Monroe, La., posted a Dec. 23 surveillance video purportedly from inside McAllister’s district office in Monroe.

The video shows McAllister kissing a woman identified by the newspaper as a congressional staffer for the first-term lawmaker. Federal payroll records show she is a part-time aide who began working for McAllister the day after he won his seat last year.

McAllister won a special election on Nov. 16 to replace Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.). McAllister won in the heavily Republican district by playing up his conservative credentials, including his Christian faith and his 16-year marriage.

The video was apparently taken on December 23, 2012, less than a month after McAllister was elected in a Special Election.  By the end of the day McAllister had issued the standard heartfelt apologia:

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.) asked for forgiveness Monday afternoon after a video purporting to show the congressman kissing a female staffer in his congressional office in Louisiana surfaced.

McAllister, who was just elected in a November special election, has been married for 16 years and has five children.

“There’s no doubt I’ve fallen short and I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve,” he said in a statement issued from his office. “Trust is something I know has to be earned whether you’re a husband, a father, or a congressman. I promise to do everything I can to earn back the trust of everyone I’ve disappointed.”

He said he  was “very sorry” and did not want to make a political statement about the video’s release.

“From day one, I’ve always tried to be an honest man,” he said. “I ran for Congress to make a difference and not to just be another politician. I don’t want to make a political statement on this, I would just simply like to say that I’m very sorry for what I’ve done. While I realize I serve the public, I would appreciate the privacy given to my children as we get through this.”

As is typical with these cases, the issue isn’t so much McAllister’s infidelity, which has been part of Washington politics, and human life, forever. It’s the hypocrisy of someone who campaigned for office citing his marriage and his commitment to “family values” as the reasons voters should elect him. Since it’s rather hard to believe that this relationship began suddenly in December 2013, it seems obvious that McAllister was being a typical hypocrite.

Update: According to reports, the female staffer has apparently been dismissed. McAllister, of course, remains in office.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. KM says:

    Rules are for Thee, nay for Me. I’m a Family Man (till your back is turned, anyways).

    Keep on promoting that sanctity of marriage!

  2. bill says:

    he gets a waiver- she looks pretty hot!

  3. C. Clavin says:

    Really? A Republican Family Values hypocrite. I’m shocked. Shocked.

  4. al-Ameda says:

    To be fair, David Vitter told him it was okay if he paid for this kind of thing.

  5. sam says:

    “There’s no doubt I’ve fallen short and I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve,” he said in a statement issued from his office. ”

    That’s an apology? Ah, Louisiana, how far you have fallen from the high standard of low hypocrisy set those many years ago by one of your sons.

  6. grumpy realist says:

    So the female staffer gets fired and the guy walks away scott-free. Figures. And these guys were yowling about impeaching Clinton?

  7. rudderpedals says:

    Fortunately he fired the staffer for cause (too darned good looking to stay around)

    FWIW bill his soon-to-be-estranged-wife is a hottie.

  8. LaMont says:

    It’s the hypocrisy of someone who campaigned for office citing his marriage and his commitment to “family values” as the reasons voters should elect him.

    The real travesty here is the simpleness of the average voter there to elect someone for that person’s committment to “family values”! Since when did family values become something of a bonus and not something we should just expect from every candidate?

  9. DrDaveT says:

    Hey, what says “family values” more than having as many families as possible?

  10. MikeSJ says:

    In all fairness to the Congressman they did try to warn us what would happen if the Gays started getting married!

  11. PJ says:

    The evidence is clear, she’s a temptress sent by Satan.

    Congressman McAllister should introduce a bill requiring women to wear some sort of outfit that would cover their entire body so that he or other men won’t be tempted by them again.

  12. bill says:

    @rudderpedals: had to google it but yeah, good call!

  13. Andre Kenji says:

    I think that “sexual harassment” is a bigger issue than hypocrisy.

  14. Brett says:

    It sounds like he learned the David Vitter lesson: apologize and make noise about asking forgiveness from God and your family, but don’t resign. Eventually the media and conservatives will move on, because what are they going to do – vote for a Democrat instead?

    In the mean-time, this played out about as I expected. He’ll face almost no consequences, but the staffer is out of a job and possibly out of a marriage.

    *sigh* Something almost exactly similar to this scenario played out with two families I know that were close to us and very close to each other. It’s probably easier to cheat once you’ve gone ahead and done it, since you don’t need much rationalization to explain why you’re spending time with the other person’s spouse – it’s just assumed that it’s because you’re all good friends, and in this case because the staffer worked for him.