Trump’s drive for political revenge faces a key test in Saturday’s Louisiana Senate primary
President Donald Trump’s drive for political revenge We face an important test in Louisiana on SaturdayHe wants to defeat Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy five years after Cassidy voted to convict him in his second impeachment.
Trump supported Rep. Julia Letlow against Cassidy, but there was also a second opponent, Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming. ran an exciting race and made it likely that no candidate would receive a majority of the vote, which would trigger a runoff election on June 27.
This is a crucial time for Trump’s ability to show that he can unseat fellow Republicans who oppose him. Louisiana elections to be held three days before Trump He hopes to defeat Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie A race that attracted more attention in the primaries.
Removing a senator would be a new achievement for Trump. While some of his intraparty opponents in the Senate have opted not to seek reelection rather than face his wrath, he has never supported a primary challenger to a GOP senator who lost his primary. And it’s rare for a Republican senator to lose reelection; The last time was in 2017, when an appointed senator, Luther Strange of Alabama, was defeated in the primary.
Trump reiterates support for Letlow in a social media post He aimed to win over voters on Saturday, saying she was “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”
In his lengthy post, he wrote that Cassidy “is a disloyal disaster. His past campaign for Senate was all about ‘TRUMP.'”
Cassidy is one of the few remaining Republicans in Congress to vote to convict Trump during his Senate impeachment trial for his role in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He represents a solidly red state that supports Trump by 22 percentage points in 2024.
More recently, Cassidy, a physician, has had tensions 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. left with management Elsewhere on the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Last month, after Trump was forced to withdraw his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, the president blamed Cassidy.
On the campaign trail, Cassidy sought to portray race as a “present and future” issue and boasted of having a good working relationship with Trump despite the impeachment vote.
“I’m not claiming that the president likes me — no — but if you have a common goal, you can work with people even if you don’t like each other,” Cassidy said on CNN’s “Situation Room” on Friday. “And my goal is to make my country, my state, and everyone who lives here better.”
Cassidy has long had a huge financial advantage in the primary and has used it almost exclusively to attack Letlow, saying the race should be lost. It focused on her background in higher education and her past efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that are currently toxic in the GOP.
But in the final days of the primary, his two rivals are battling each other.
Representative Julia Letlow greets supporters at her campaign stop in Hammond, Louisiana, on May 6. -Gerald Herbert/AP
Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming greets supporters May 12 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. -Gerald Herbert/AP
Fleming, a former congressman who has been involved in Louisiana politics for decades, has sought to portray himself as more aligned with Trump than with Letlow, especially after working in the White House during Trump’s first term.
Letlow’s campaign labeled Fleming a “Never Trumper” and, along with an outside group, targeted him on a number of other issues, including his work as a lobbyist before becoming state treasurer.
Cassidy was confirmed by Senate GOP leaders, as is tradition for incumbents, but national Republicans otherwise kept their distance from the primaries. Not only does Trump support Letlow, but so does the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry.
The election is taking place under new and unusual circumstances. Landry recently postponed the House primary but scheduled the Senate primary for Saturday in response to the Supreme Court redistricting decision. The election is also the first under the new closed primary system, where independent voters, a key bloc for Cassidy, must fill out extra paperwork if they want to participate in the GOP primary.
Cassidy’s campaign manager, Katie Larkin, issued a statement Friday, alleging that Landry was behind an “intentionally difficult process” for voters, saying: “The Governor shut down the primary and repeatedly interfered with this election to support Julia Letlow.”
Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with Fox Business on Friday, Landry predicted Letlow would finish first in the primary and took aim at Cassidy and Fleming.
“He had two guys who weren’t very Southern in the way they treated him,” Landry said.
With Trump’s political capital at stake on Saturday, the primary is also a test for Surgeon General Kennedy’s allies. MAHA PAC, a group associated with Kennedy’s agenda, spent six figures opposing Cassidy and supporting Letlow, but other super PACs spent much more in the primary.
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