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BATON ROUGE, La. — After taking out five Indiana state senators who opposed his push for congressional redistricting, President Donald Trump’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 GOP Senate primary 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.
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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 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again 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 delivering for Louisiana, 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.”
LETLOW EXPLAINS HER PAST SUPPORT FOR DIVERSITY PROGRAMS
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 time. I quickly witnessed the left completely hijack it, turn it into this Marxist leftist indoctrination of our children. And so, when I got to Congress for the last five years, I’ve been fighting against it.
And she charged that the criticism of her from Cassidy and Fleming over DEI is “all baseless attacks, desperate attacks.”
Letlow won her congressional seat in 2021, after her husband, Luke Letlow, died six days after being sworn into the U.S. House after his 2020 election victory for the seat she now holds.
She was backed by Trump even before she entered the race.
“Not only did he encourage me to get into this race, but also to have his complete and total endorsement has been, wow, the honor of a lifetime,” Letlow said.
Letlow has taken aim at Cassidy for his bipartisan efforts in the Senate, including his vote for the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law that was a signature domestic achievement for then-President Joe Biden.
Asked about her criticism, Cassidy said the “people want someone who can deliver for Louisiana. The Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act has brought $13.5 billion to Louisiana for roads and bridges and high-speed internet, and along the way creating a lot of good paying jobs. My opponent opposed that bill.”
Fleming, who served as a White House deputy chief of staff during Trump’s first term, has argued that he’s the most conservative candidate in the GOP Senate primary.
‘They see me clearly MAGA,” Fleming told Fox News Digital, as he referred to Louisiana Republicans. “I served in his entire first administration at various capacities. I was one of the first congressmen that endorsed him in 2016.”
Fleming claimed that Letlow is “not the prototype for a Trump endorsement. She’s much more like a Democrat.”
And Fleming, apparently, has become a threat to Letlow, as a super PAC supporting the congresswoman started to run ads attacking him.
But Trump’s endorsement in the nomination race weighs heavily in a state he carried by 22 points in his 2024 election victory.
“It’s the most powerful endorsement in the world,” Letlow said, adding that Louisiana Republicans “are huge fans of the president.”
And the Louisiana primary comes a week and a half after Indiana’s primary, where Trump-backed challengers ousted five state senators who had defied the president over his redistricting push.
The political world was closely watching Indiana’s primary because it was the first of a series of major tests this month of Trump’s endorsement power in GOP nomination showdowns, and the president cleared his first hurdle with ease.
Voters in Louisiana will also cast ballots in primary contests for State Supreme Court, Public Service Commission and state school board, along with five proposed state constitutional amendments.
But the primaries for the U.S. House seats were postponed by Landry after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional district map.
Republican state senators in Louisiana on Thursday advanced a plan to eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black congressional seats ahead of the midterms. Louisiana’s state House will likely vote on the map next week. The U.S. House primaries are being postponed until November.
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