BATON ROUGE, La. â After taking out five Indiana state senators who opposed his push for congressional redistricting, President ‘s next target is Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Cassidy, who five and a half years ago voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, is fighting for his political life in a competitive race against two major challengers, including one backed by the president, in Saturday’s in the solidly red southern state.
Trump and his allies, including Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, are backing GOP Rep. Julia Letlow in the Senate primary. Also in the race is former Rep. John Fleming, who is the state treasurer. If no candidate cracks 50% of the primary vote, the top two finishers will face off for the nomination in a June 27 runoff election.
The primary is the latest test of Trump’s endorsements in GOP nomination races and of the president’s immense grip over the Republican Party.
After cruising to re-election six years ago, Cassidy was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted in early 2021 to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House for his role in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters who aimed to upend congressional certification of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
But since the start of Trump’s second term, Cassidy has been supportive of the president’s agenda and his nominees, including voting to approve Health Secretary .
But Kennedy and his movement are out for revenge.
That’s because Cassidy, a doctor, has been a skeptic of Kennedy’s push to reform the nation’s health policies, including Kennedy’s efforts to cut back on vaccine recommendations.
And Kennedy allies blamed Cassidy, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, for helping sink the surgeon general nomination of Casey Means, a close Kennedy ally and top MAHA advocate, after Cassidy did not bring it to a committee vote.
Meanwhile, Trump has blasted the senator as a “very disloyal person.”
And on the eve of the primary, the president took to social media to praise Letlow as a “Highly Respected America First Congresswoman.”
Making Cassidy’s climb to renomination even tougher, Louisiana will now run separate party primaries in the Senate race, which replaces a system where all candidates appeared in one single jungle primary. That guarantees a more conservative and pro-Trump electorate for the GOP nomination.
Cassidy is highlighting his record over two terms in the Senate in , which is one of the nation’s poorest states. And he’s showcased his support for Louisiana’s large oil and gas industry, which accounts for roughly 15% of the state’s workforce.
“When people ask things such as, can you work with President Trump, I point out that he has signed into law four bills that I wrote or negotiated,” the senator said in a primary eve interview with Fox News Digital. “We continue to work together, by the way.”
And Cassidy touted that he’s “a conservative senator who delivers.”
In trying to avert becoming the first elected Republican senator in nearly a decade and a half to be ousted in a primary, Cassidy and an allied super PAC have dished out more than $20 million on ads, according to AdImpact, a national ad tracking firm. That total is more than Letlow and Fleming, combined, have spent.
Some of those ads have knocked Letlow over her past support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs during her tenure at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Cassidy argued that Republican voters are “concerned about her shifting position on DEI. She was all in for DEI.”
Defending her record, Letlow explained in a Fox News Digital interview on Friday that “back in 2020 whenever DEI was introduced to us, we had no idea what it was back then, and I quickly witnessed it. I was in higher education at the
