After his infidelity was revealed, he vowed not to run again, but then reversed himself. Kissing Congressman's last stand

TALLULAH, La. — Vance McAllister dives into the annual Teddy’s Bearfest street fair, caressing baby cheeks and hugging old ladies — the rare Republican showing and receiving affection in a crowd of African-Americans.

Not a single person in this city near the Mississippi border — nor at any other event on this scorching October day — takes McAllister to task for locking lips with an aide last December, an act of infidelity caught on video.


“This is blowin’ your mind, isn’t it?” the Republican says with delight. “It’s because I’m so approachable.”

The “kissing congressman,” looking heavier these days, is seriously testing the limits of incumbency. But this conservative Northeast Louisiana district seems to be largely looking past his role in one of Congress’ most salacious scandals in years.

McAllister has been campaigning for less than a month and is hewing once again to the centrist positioning that helped propel him to a 2013 special election upset. After his extramarital dalliance was revealed in April, he vowed not to run again, then reversed himself months later. Meanwhile, eight other candidates jumped in.

( Also on POLITICO: Wife of 'kissing congressman' lauds him)

“He blew it. He blew it. I’m trying to tell you he blew it,” says former Rep. Clyde Holloway, one of the eight. “He wouldn’t have had a token opponent but for that” kiss.

Holloway says this with McAllister standing right next to him at an event honoring the designation of Poverty Point in Pioneer, Louisiana, as a UNESCO World Heritage site. McAllister answers the criticism: “I don’t think I blew it. But I understand what Clyde is saying: I made it a lot harder by my public mistake.”

He’s underselling the work ahead. Of all the House incumbents in the country, the 40-year-old McAllister — despite being rich enough to finance much of his campaign — may have the toughest road to reelection. First, he has to clear Louisiana’s “top two” primary on Nov. 4 — no guarantee — then win a likely runoff.

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Already, he’s lost the “Duck Dynasty” endorsement he shrewdly used in his 2013 race in the 5th Congressional District. Now that family franchise is delivering political heft and more than $50,000 in campaign cash to “Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson’s nephew, Zach Dasher, who is challenging McAlister.

Just last month, McAllister’s chief of staff was arrested for drunken driving. National and Louisiana GOP leaders didn’t want him to run again. His rookie campaign manager, Patrick Barron, was a legislative assistant only a few weeks ago.

Yet McAllister is in this race. So he’s wading through a crowd of Tallulahns who bristle at the suggestion that the incumbent’s unfaithfulness hurts him.

( Earlier on POLITICO: 'Kissing congressman' heavy in debt)

“What’s wrong with that?” asks Brenda Matthews of the extended smooch. Tallulah is “pulling in his direction.”

“What a man does when he’s off the clock ain’t none of my business,” says Charlie Edward, “as long as he’s doing his job.”

A woman cranes her neck at McAllister as she studies his likeness on campaign literature. Informed she’s looking at the “kissing congressman,” she says his infidelity affects her vote. Luckily for McAllister, she lives across the bridge in Mississippi.

McAllister says that when the Ouachita Citizen published the video of him kissing married aide Melissa Peacock, it was “one of the toughest days of my life.” He insists that was his lone moment of infidelity.

“Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shoot yeah,” he says, quickly changing the subject to his first job: as a deejay playing “good ol’ country.”

( Earlier on POLITICO: McAllister will run for full term)

At first, he decided not to run again to shield his family (he’s a father of five) from the media. But his wife, Kelly, convinced him to reconsider; she’s now stumping for him on the trail.

“You all seem to be mesmerized by: How do I even have a chance anymore after what I did?” he says. “I don’t think that people have ever seen a politician say: I did that.”

Of course, it’s hard to argue with video footage that shows you kissing someone other than your wife.

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The Washington-based Club for Growth, which is backing Dasher, is airing $250,000 in ads attacking McAllister for his “personal issues.” But the incumbent’s rivals dance around the topic when asked about it directly.

A deeply religious candidate, Dasher says he’ll “forgive anybody.” Holloway says he isn’t “condoning” personal attacks on McAllister, while Democrat Jamie Mayo says “the people have to make that decision” on whether the kiss matters.

McAllister is still asking for forgiveness from one person: Dasher’s TV-star uncle, Robertson, who says McAllister is not “godly.”

“I’m like, ‘Phil, what we have in common is we believe in the same God that believes in forgiveness and second chances,’” McAllister says. “Nowhere in the Bible did anyone bring back anyone’s past sins and throw them in their face.”

The smooch hasn’t just hurt McAllister personally and politically; it’s also been tough on him physically.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a chiseled Oklahoma Republican who drove eight hours to hit the trail with McAllister on this Saturday, incessantly chides his good buddy for putting on weight, telling constituents that of the hundreds of House members, “not all of them look this ugly.”

Later, at McAllister’s house, a porch swing cracks underneath them. Mullin blames McAllister.

As he gobbles banana cream pudding, McAllister admits he’s gained about 40 pounds. Before McAllister left for midterm recess, he says, House Speaker John Boehner buttonholed him: “You’re getting a little thick.” McAllister attributes the gain to Washington’s “filet mignon.” Boehner’s reply: “You ever thought about getting the fish?”

McAllister speaks highly of Boehner, who counseled the Louisianan to take the scandal seriously but did not tell him what to do with his career. Other Republicans were less deferential.

Former Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told him to resign after a meeting that still irks McAllister, who now refers to Cantor as “poultry litter.” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called McAllister an “embarrassment.”

“He made a mistake by deciding to run again,” Jindal says now. “They need to put one of those surgeon general warnings on your voting card: ‘Warning: Congress can become addictive.’”

The two loathe each other. McAllister laces into Jindal for skipping the UNESCO event. “I’ll stay here in the state and talk smack about him all day,” McAllister says. “It is pathetic that our governor is not here today.”

People engage McAllister constantly, even when he’s not working the crowd. As prison inmates on work release fry up fish and sweet potato fries in Pioneer, McAllister is approached by the aunt of Harris Brown, another candidate. She doesn’t rule out supporting McAllister over her own relative.

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McAllister says he’s still in this race because he’s “real” and his critics are not.

Exhibit A: His first ad directly addresses McAllister’s amorous misstep, with wife Kelly saying she’s “blessed to have a husband who owns up to his mistakes.” A “180-degree difference” from the “typical politician ad” his consultants advised, McAllister says.

He attributes the ad to Kelly. She doesn’t cop to it but says: “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to.”

McAllister is the rare House Republican who backs Medicaid expansion in his state. He kept on staffers from predecessor Rep. Rodney Alexander’s office and kept on his chief of staff after the drunken driving arrest. He talks to voters sporting a tobacco stain on his lip — and swallows the juice during House votes to evade Boehner’s detection.

None of these moves is from the “How to run for Congress” blueprint.

“A lot of members ain’t real. A lot of members ain’t never had a job, a lot of members couldn’t tell you how to get yourself out of a wet paper bag,” he says. “It’s about being real, man.”

Does he have a reelection strategy? “I don’t. It’s all about being myself.”

Of course, McAllister’s everyman persona is somewhat at odds with his wealth, which allowed him to self-finance his 2013 special election win and this reelection campaign. He’s put $400,000 into this race and is mulling another $200,000.

After making the rounds in Tallulah, where the poverty rate is double the state average, he returns to his Monroe home with a pool, a free-standing quilting “saloon” and a recreational sawmill. He’s got a multimillion-dollar stake in an energy company and can afford to finance his own political ambitions, though he admits his multitude of businesses have taken a hit since he became a politician.

“The sacrifice that I’ve made is the money I’ve put in there. I can make it back, and if I don’t, then I maybe never needed it anyway. It’s not that big a deal,” he says casually. “Money don’t make none of us.”

Political consultant Calvin Moore of Jamestown Associates and a two-man film crew are tagging along this day to shoot a McAllister-financed ad. Preparing to shoot an ad back at his house, Moore tells McAllister he needs to put on a more serious shirt than the short-sleeved number he wore in Tallulah. McAllister is displeased.

“I have to change my shirt. Again,” he grumbles as he ambles into his manse. Toys are strewn everywhere. Three of his children rocket by in a golf cart. A stranded ATV sits in the middle of the property, out of gas.

Mullin draws out McAllister’s youthful qualities, and together they resemble high schoolers raising hell on a Saturday night. McAllister speeds everywhere in his jacked up F-150, disappearing from view within minutes between events. Mullin tries to keep up, swerving through traffic at legally dubious speeds.

Asked if he gets lots of tickets, McAllister replies: “Not anymore.” Later in the day, on the way to a low-key fundraiser in tiny Tullos, Louisiana, Moore is pulled over trying to keep up.

This is not the way most congressmen act in front of a reporter.

“I don’t like being in D.C. I know it’s our nation’s capital, and I love the statues and monuments and all that. But I don’t like being there,” he explains. “It’s a culture I’m not a part of. I don’t go for that country-club crowd.”

McAllister is expert at the politicians’ concerned lean, the handshake, the hug. But in Tullos, he gives a half-hearted money pitch. He doesn’t think he needs it, after all.

“It’s time for the homestretch, so all the support you can give me and put the signs up, keep wearing the shirts and talk to everybody when you get the chance. We’ll be all right,” he tells about 30 people in an industrial space. “Love y’all, thank you for coming.”

These sorts of pitches netted McAllister’s campaign just under $20,000 from donors during the mid-August to October period, while Dasher raised nearly $240,000 fueled by endorsements from the Club for Growth, Sarah Palin and the Robertsons, McAllister’s one-time supporters.

At Willie’s Duck Diner in West Monroe, owned by Willie Robertson, Dasher says he went to the Robertsons and asked for their support. Their answer: “We think you were born for something such as this.”

“The Robertson endorsement in this neck of the woods, it gives me a very unique platform to be able to talk about … the idea that rights come from God, not man,” says Dasher, a baby-faced 36-year-old. “The folks we’re talking to are eating it up.”

While McAllister has other challengers, he clearly disdains the brand of no-compromise conservatism embodied by the surging Dasher. He demonstrates this in Pioneer, where he seeks out Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, the state’s other endangered incumbent, to say hello.

“Hang in there man,” she tells him. “Get after it,” McAllister responds.

“I’m probably the only one in the delegation who works with her,” the Republican says as he walks away.

This is all part of McAllister’s pitch as a pragmatic Republican who views people on welfare programs “as investments, not as a partisan side that we don’t deal with no more.” It worked for him in 2013, when he defeated state Sen. Neil Riser, who staked out positions on the right.

But this time, he could end up in a runoff with Mayo, the mayor of Monroe and the only Democrat in the race, dulling the appeal of his GOP moderation. McAllister, however, believes he can lure minority voters and Democrats by embracing Medicaid expansion, opposing the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and supporting the farm bill, even with food stamps.

Dasher opposes all of those things. McAllister says he’s not angry about the “Duck Dynasty” regime supporting Dasher, but, sounding like a congressional Democrat, McAllister warns that Dasher will join the “obstructionists” if he is elected.

“He has a lot to learn. I don’t think he knows what real life is,” McAllister says. “He’s all about an ideology; he wants to run around talking about our forefathers and how wonderful they are and ‘Let’s turn the clock back.’”

It’s impossible to forecast McAllister’s fate in November. Dasher, Holloway and Ralph Abraham, a “center-right” conservative physician, have all claimed momentum.

McAllister doesn’t guarantee victory, but he does insist the kissing congressman has been forgiven. The politicians who pay at the ballot box in Louisiana are criminals, not people like him, McAllister says.

“A scandal’s when you steal money from the taxpayers,” he says. “We’re past it, man.”

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