Trump’s drive for political revenge faces a key test in Saturday’s Louisiana Senate primary
By Patrick Svitek, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s drive for political revenge faces a key test Saturday in Louisiana, where he is looking to defeat Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy five years after Cassidy voted to convict him in his second impeachment.
Trump has backed Rep. Julia Letlow against Cassidy, though a second challenger — Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming — has run a spirited race and made it likely that no candidate receives a majority of the vote, which would trigger a June 27 runoff.
It is a crucial time for Trump’s ability to show he can unseat fellow Republicans who cross him. The Louisiana election comes three days before Trump hopes to beat Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in his primary, a race that has drawn more attention.
Unseating a senator would be a new feat for Trump. While some of his intraparty detractors in the Senate have chosen not to seek reelection rather than face his wrath, he has never backed a primary challenger to a GOP senator who lost that primary. And it is rare for a Republican senator to lose renomination — the last time it happened was in 2017, when an appointed senator, Luther Strange of Alabama, was defeated in a primary runoff.
Trump reiterated his endorsement of Letlow in a social media post aimed at turning out voters for her Saturday, saying she is “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”
He wrote in the lengthy post that Cassidy, “is a disloyal disaster. His entire past campaign for the Senate was about ‘TRUMP.’”
Cassidy is one of the few Republicans left in Congress who voted to convict Trump during a Senate impeachment trial over his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. He represents a solidly red state that backed Trump by 22 percentage points in 2024.
More recently, Cassidy – a physician – has had tension with Trump as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. While Cassidy voted to confirm Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he has split with the administration on other parts of its “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Last month, after Trump had to pull his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, the president blamed Cassidy.
On the campaign trail, Cassidy has sought to portray the race as about “the present and the future” and has boasted about having a good working relationship with Trump despite the impeachment vote.
“I’m not claiming the president loves me — no — but you can work with people even if you don’t love each other if you’ve got a common goal,” Cassidy said Friday on CNN’s “Situation Room.” “And my goal is to make my country and my state — and everybody who lives here — better off.”
Cassidy has long had a large financial advantage in the primary and used it to almost exclusively attack Letlow, saying the race is hers to lose. He has focused on her background in higher education and past efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that are now toxic in the GOP.
Yet in the final days of the primary, his two challengers have been battling one another.
Fleming, a former congressman who has been involved in Louisiana politics for decades, has sought to portray himself as more aligned with Trump than Letlow, especially after working in the White House during Trump’s first term.
Letlow’s campaign has labeled Fleming a “Never Trumper” and, along with an outside group, targeted him on a range of other issues, including his work as a lobbyist before he became state treasurer.
Cassidy has been endorsed by Senate GOP leaders, as is custom for incumbents, though national Republicans have otherwise kept their distance from the primary. Not only is Trump backing Letlow, but so is the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry.
The election is occurring under new and unusual circumstances. Landry recently postponed House primaries – but kept the Senate primary scheduled for Saturday – in response to a Supreme Court ruling on redistricting. The election also is the first under a new closed primary system where unaffiliated voters – a key bloc for Cassidy – have to fill out extra paperwork if they want to participate in the GOP primary.
Cassidy’s campaign manager, Katie Larkin, issued a statement Friday suggesting Landry was behind an “intentionally difficult process” for voters, saying, “The Governor closed the primary and continuously meddled in this election to support Julia Letlow.”
Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but in a Fox Business interview Friday, he predicted Letlow would finish first in the primary and took a shot at Cassidy and Fleming.
“She’s had two men that have just not been very southerly about the way they’ve treated her,” Landry said.
While Trump’s political capital is on the line Saturday, the primary is also a test for allies of Kennedy, the health secretary. A group associated with Kennedy’s agenda, MAHA PAC, has spent six figures opposing Cassidy and supporting Letlow, though other super PACs have spent much more in the primary.
The-CNN-Wire
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