Let me start by praising the indefatigable Stephanie Grace. She was part of the Great 2012 Putsch at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, told she could keep her job, but not as a columnist, rather a beat reporter. Along with many colleagues from the paper, she moved to John Georges’ Advocate, which moved into New Orleans when the Times-Pic stopped daily editions. Mr. Georges got a treasure in that move. Ms. Grace’s columns are essential reading for people trying to understand the politics of South Louisiana.
Yesterday, she looked in on the new life of no one's favorite ex-senator, David Vitter. You’ll never guess what he’s doing now.
Of course you will. He’s a lobbyist. And his shop, the Mercury Public Affairs, has some eyebrow-lifting clients. Even former colleague Marco Rubio’s not a fan:
The company Rubio references is Hikvision, a largely state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer (Vitter does like surveillance) that has been cut off from US government contracts.Earlier this summer, Congress
cut off access to U.S. government contracts for a handful of prominent Chinese government-linked technology companies.
Now one of those companies—a leading surveillance equipment manufacturer, partially owned by the Chinese government—is beefing up its lobbying muscle in hopes of pushing back.
Just how bottom will Mercury feed? Subsurface bottom.It just so happens that Mercury is Vitter’s firm. He’s listed on its web site as a co-chair, and was named in a recent
Daily Beast story as a member of the team working on the $70,000-per-month contract with Hikvision that Rubio referenced. The Daily Beast also notes that the firm has subcontracted from now-convicted Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for work in Ukraine, and represented interests in “repressive states” such as Turkey and China as well.
Vitter is also representing a company connected to Russian aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who once loaned Manafort $10 million, according to documents released in connection with the trial.
