Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 31st, 2015, Louisiana Senator David Vitter is officially running on fumes in his campaign for governor.

Vitter was a two-time senator now hoping to switch lanes and become governor in the

upcoming election. Sure he'd had some scandal in his past, more on that in a moment,

but he should have been doing better than this. So the question is why were his prospects so

dim and falling so quickly just a few days before the election? Well that's

because a week earlier a bizarre incident took place that exposed various and bungled attempts at

spying among the various and bungling GOP candidates for governor. It was an

incident that the Times-Picayune in New Orleans described as, quote,

an explosion of espionage that feels a bit like a miniature Cold War being fought in Jefferson

Parish and New Orleans.

So, look, it is complicated,

one spy spying on a group that happens

to include a different spy, so very complicated,

but also maybe classic Louisiana politics.

So here to discuss this spy versus spy and this 2015 election for

Louisiana Governor are, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. So look I should say right off the bat we

try not to be one of these history shows I will you know I think we do a pretty good job where it's like, we read Wikipedia the night before and then we just tell you what we learned. We try to bring some context and some analysis and some depth and so forth. That said, for this episode, I feel like if we can simply lay out the basics of this case

we will have done a great service and told a good story. It is you know there's some

...