After ousting Bill Cassidy, Donald Trump faces fresh test of his sway with GOP voters in Louisiana’s Senate runoff
By Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) — Louisiana Republican voters already rejected an incumbent senator who was crossways with President Donald Trump. In a primary runoff on Saturday, they’ll decide whether to follow Trump’s lead in choosing a new nominee.
Rep. Julia Letlow, who is endorsed by Trump, faces state Treasurer John Fleming in a contest that is all but certain to determine the next senator in the deep-red state.
They are vying to replace Sen. Bill Cassidy, a two-term Republican who finished third in the May 16 primary. Along with Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Cassidy is one of two GOP incumbents ousted in primaries this spring after Trump opposed them. The president’s bid for vengeance in Louisiana came after Cassidy voted in 2021 to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial.
In the primary, Letlow earned the most votes with nearly 45% support, followed by Fleming at 28% and Cassidy at almost 25%. Because no candidate received a majority, the top two finishers advanced to the runoff.
Saturday’s election is the latest test of Trump’s grip on the Republican Party. It comes during a midterm primary season that began with Trump pulling off an impressive string of victories — including ousting Cassidy, Cornyn and another intra-party foe, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, as well as defeating Indiana state senators who rejected his calls for redistricting.
But in recent weeks, GOP voters have snubbed Trump — passing over his picks in Republican primaries for governor in Iowa and Georgia. His choice in South Carolina was also on track to lose ahead of last Tuesday’s primary runoff, so Trump — in a last-minute, face-saving move — also endorsed the other candidate, state Attorney General Alan Wilson, who would go on to win by more than 30 points.
Trump on Thursday night held a telephone rally for Letlow. He said he has seen Letlow “tested at the highest level” and has “been a fearless champion for the people of your great state, right from the beginning.”
The president praised Letlow’s vote for his sweeping tax and spending measure last year, touted her support for his immigration enforcement efforts and said she would back his elections bill that would broadly ban mail-in voting, require voter identification and more.
“She’s fantastic. She’s going to do a great job. She’s a warrior,” Trump said during his appearance, which lasted about six minutes.
Little daylight between the candidates
Despite Trump’s endorsement, the ideological differences in the GOP race are relatively scant.
Fleming, 74, has campaigned on his support for a “pro-Trump agenda.” In one ad, Fleming’s campaign touts his time working in the White House during the first Trump administration, brags that he “opposes liberal nonsense” and describes Fleming as a “MAGA conservative,” using the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Letlow, a 45-year-old former university administrator, was first elected to Congress in 2021. She won a special election to fill a vacancy created when her husband, Luke Letlow, died from Covid-19 in December 2020, weeks after winning the 5th District House seat but before taking office.
Fleming is a former House member who departed in 2016 to make a failed Senate run. He went on to serve in several roles in the Trump administration, ending as assistant to the president for planning and implementation.
A key factor in Saturday’s runoff could be how voters in the state’s three most populous parishes — Orleans, East Baton Rouge and Jefferson — vote. In the May 16 primary, Cassidy was the top vote-getter in all three.
Democrats are also choosing their Senate nominee in a runoff Saturday. The two finalists are farmer and former state House candidate Jamie Davis and Navy veteran and defense contractor Gary Crockett. Davis nearly won the primary outright, with more than 47% of the vote, while Crockett edged out a third candidate, Nick Albares, by fewer than 300 votes out of roughly 345,000 cast.
However, Trump has won Louisiana by more than 18 percentage points three times, and the state is not viewed by Democrats as a target this fall — political realities that all but assure the winner in Saturday’s GOP runoff will be elected to a full term in November.
This year’s Louisiana primaries are the first since the state scrapped its previous “jungle primary” system. Voters registered with a party can only participate in their party’s primary and runoff, while unaffiliated voters can choose which primary to vote in. However, those unaffiliated voters are required to stick with the same party through the runoff.
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