BATON ROUGE, La. — Senator Bill Cassidy is the last of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack still running for re-election. His bid for a third term has become a high-profile test of Trump’s sway over the GOP and of whether a Republican who breaks with the former president can hold a seat in today’s party.
Cassidy faces two Republican challengers in the primary: Congresswoman Julia Letlow, who has Mr. Trump’s endorsement, and former Rep. John Fleming, a Trump administration alum. Unless a candidate tops 50 percent, the top two will advance to a runoff next month — setting up a potentially bruising intra-party fight.
For many Louisiana Republicans, Cassidy’s vote to convict felt like a betrayal. At the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, retired deputy sheriff Kevin Dupree said he wouldn’t support Cassidy and suggested that vote could end the senator’s career in the state. Nearby, Kelby Daigle, chairman of the St. Martin Parish GOP, offered a different view: he backed Cassidy and said the senator did the right thing, even if he hasn’t explained the decision as well as voters might want. “Conservatism is about ideas and principles,” Daigle said, adding that the party shouldn’t revolve around a single personality.
But for other voters, Trump’s backing still matters more than ideological nuance. “Trump does so much for Louisiana,” said Republican activist Dustin Jacque Arnaud, who plans to vote for Letlow because of Trump’s request. Letlow, a former college administrator who won a 2021 special election after her husband Luke Letlow died of COVID, has positioned herself as a MAGA-aligned successor to her husband’s congressional legacy. In Washington she has focused on education, children’s issues and a “Parents Bill of Rights” proposal, and she sits on the appropriations committee.
Letlow has not waged personal attacks on Cassidy in many speeches; instead she argues voters need a senator who reflects their view that Trump’s 2020 defeat should not be doubted. Cassidy’s campaign, in turn, has spent heavily to portray her as soft on campus diversity initiatives and otherwise insufficiently conservative.
Cassidy is trying to shift the conversation to his record: as a physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee, he points to bills he wrote or helped negotiate that were signed into law — on prescription drugs, fentanyl enforcement and billions in federal funding for local projects, including flood recovery and infrastructure. He emphasizes pragmatism and delivering results to Louisiana towns and parishes, urging voters to focus on “the present and the future” rather than re-litigating the past.
At campaign events, Cassidy often avoids revisiting the conviction vote directly. He leans on his professional ethos: “You make a decision based on the facts before you… and then you live with that decision,” he said after a rally — language he links to his years as a physician.
Cassidy’s strategy includes appealing beyond the Republican base. Some independents and moderate Democrats say they like a senator willing to cross party lines. Eli Feinstein of New Orleans, a longtime Democrat who switched to no-party status so he could take part in the Republican primary, said he will vote for Cassidy this spring even though he plans to back a Democrat in November. But efforts to court Democrats have been undermined by state-level changes: Republican Governor Jeff Landry supported closing Louisiana’s historically open primary, preventing registered Democrats from requesting Republican ballots unless they switch registration. Cassidy has publicly urged Democrats to change registration to help him in the primary.
The pressure on Cassidy is intense from both directions. Former lieutenant governor Jay Dardenne described him as “squeezed in a vice” — pushed by voters who demand unquestioning loyalty to Trump on one side and by those who expect independence on the other. Some voters remain unconvinced by Cassidy’s outreach. Debbie Spinks, a Republican, said his recent support for legislation favored by Trump feels like political expediency rather than conviction: “Only because it’s election time,” she said.
The broader stakes extend beyond this Senate seat. Most of the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021 did not seek re-election; Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are among the few who remained and faced voters. Murkowski, who survived a 2022 re-election bid in Alaska’s unusual top-four primary system, has offered Cassidy moral support, acknowledging that a Trump endorsement carries “significant weight.” If Cassidy loses, the Senate would lose one of the GOP members most likely to break with the former president and to pursue bipartisan policy work.
Louisiana’s electorate complicates predictions. The state’s population is diverse in heritage and religion, and local political patterns aren’t necessarily a national bellwether. Still, many voters here fall into clear pro- or anti-Trump camps. Others, like attorney Will Coenen, occupy an undecided middle: he has backed Trump before but worries about national security issues such as the war in Iran; he said he cares most about practical outcomes for Louisiana and is uncertain who to trust.
Cassidy’s campaign has a visible ground operation — volunteers handing out “Geaux Bill” stickers and campaign flyers showing Cassidy with Trump — and he emphasizes the federal dollars and projects he has brought home. Supporters like Leslie Davis argue that elected officials must sometimes make hard decisions that won’t please everyone.
As primary voters head to the polls, the race will measure more than Cassidy’s personal standing. It will indicate how powerful Trump’s endorsements remain inside the Republican Party, whether a Senate Republican can survive after a highly publicized breach with the former president, and how voters balance character, principle and practical results when choosing representation in Washington.