Bill Cassidy lost the Republican primary in Louisiana on Saturday after Donald Trump worked to drive him out of the race, and voters advanced two challengers to a runoff scheduled for 27 June. With 98% of the vote counted, Julia Letlow led with 45.2%, John Fleming had 28.3% and Cassidy trailed with 24.4%.
The result marks a sharp fall for a senator who once tried to position himself as a defender of constitutional duty over party loyalty. Cassidy's bid for a third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after the January 6 insurrection, a move that brought a censure from Louisiana's Republican party and made him a persistent target of the former president's anger. Trump later encouraged Letlow to enter the race earlier this year, and she made his support central to her campaign, thanking him on stage and calling his endorsement unmatched.
Letlow told supporters, “Louisiana was not pleased with that vote. They took that as a sign that he had turned his back on the Louisiana voters.” Trump had dismissed Cassidy as “a disloyal disaster,” “a terrible guy” and someone “he’s going to get CLOBBERED,” while praising Letlow as “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”
Yet Cassidy's defeat was not driven only by the Trump verdict. Last year he cast the deciding vote to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a choice that was notable even among Republicans. He also later backed an attempt to establish an independent commission investigating the insurrection and called on Trump to end his 2024 re-election bid after his indictment for allegedly possessing classified material. Those moves did not erase the central fact of the race: in Louisiana's Republican primary, loyalty to Trump still mattered more than Cassidy's record in Washington.
Cassidy has argued that his politics are about duty rather than personality, saying, “Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.” On Saturday, that argument was not enough. One of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after January 6, he is now leaving office earlier than he hoped, while most of the other Republicans who joined that vote have already exited the Senate. The runoff on 27 June will decide whether Letlow or Fleming ends up carrying the party's banner into the next stage of the contest, but the first round made the larger verdict plain: in Louisiana, Trump's revenge still travels well.
