Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy loses primary after Trump intervention

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his primary Saturday as Louisiana voters chose instead to send two challengers to a runoff election, following an extraordinary intervention by former President Donald Trump to oust the incumbent.

Cassidy’s attempt to secure the Republican nomination for a third term in the deep-red state was jeopardized by his vote to convict Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection. In a move widely seen as an attempt to repair his standing with Trump, Cassidy last year cast the deciding vote to advance vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, contradicting the senator’s own support for immunizations and his medical training.

Earlier this year, Trump encouraged U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow to enter the Senate race and offered his endorsement in a bid to unseat Cassidy, a move that now has paid off. Trump lambasted Cassidy on Saturday morning, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy” on social media. Trump criticized the senator’s impeachment vote and said “he’s going to get CLOBBERED,” adding that Letlow was “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”

With 98% of the vote counted, the Associated Press reported that Letlow received 45.2% of the vote in the primary, compared with 28.3% for John Fleming, the state treasurer and former U.S. representative. Cassidy finished third with 24.4%. The race now heads to a runoff scheduled for June 27.

“I want to say thank you to a very special man who you all know, the best president this country has ever had, President Donald Trump,” Letlow told supporters in the evening, flanked by her two young children. “There is no greater endorsement than the endorsement of President Trump. We’ll always be singing that from the mountaintops.”

Invoking Cassidy’s impeachment vote, Letlow said: “Louisiana was not pleased with that vote. They took that as a sign that he had turned his back on the Louisiana voters.”

Speaking to supporters after the result was known, Cassidy made a thinly veiled reference to Trump, saying, “Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, and I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.”

“Our country is not about one individual,” he said. “It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.”

Cassidy’s defeat underscores the risks Republicans face when they break with Trump on major issues. Earlier this month, five of the seven Republican Indiana state senators who blocked a Trump-backed effort to gerrymander the state in Republicans’ favor lost their primaries. In North Carolina, Republicans are engaged in a high-stakes battle to retain a U.S. Senate seat because Sen. Thom Tillis has opted to retire after breaking with Trump last year over his top domestic policy bill.

Louisiana’s Republican Party censured Cassidy after his vote to convict Trump, an ultimately unsuccessful effort in which he was joined by six other Republican senators, most of whom have now left office. Cassidy later supported a failed attempt to establish an independent commission investigating the insurrection and called on Trump to end his 2024 reelection bid after his indictment for allegedly possessing classified material.

Even after voting to advance Kennedy out of the Senate health committee, which he chairs, and then for his confirmation, Cassidy has criticized some of Kennedy’s policies as secretary. He also opposed Trump’s attempt to have wellness influencer Casey Means confirmed as U.S. surgeon general, leading Trump to blame the senator for forcing the withdrawal of her nomination.

Changes to Louisiana’s primary system likely worsened Cassidy’s political survival prospects. In 2024, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a prominent Trump supporter, worked with the legislature to alter the state’s U.S. Senate primary rules so that candidates are nominated only by party members and unaffiliated voters.