Senator Bill Cassidy loses Louisiana Republican primary; Trump-backed Julia Letlow advances to June runoff against John Fleming

Cassidy, a two-term senator and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, had been on a collision course with Trump since February 2021, when he became one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict the president following the January 6 Capitol attack. The Louisiana Republican Party censured him after that vote, and Trump spent the years since vowing to remove him from office.

Letlow entered the race in January after Trump announced his endorsement. She had previously won a March 2021 special election for the House seat her husband Luke held before dying of COVID-19 in late 2020. Fleming, a former Freedom Caucus member and White House deputy chief of staff during Trump's first term, was already in the race as a self-described MAGA candidate when Letlow entered. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally who endorsed Letlow, also championed the state's shift to a closed primary system — a change Cassidy's campaign said was engineered to disadvantage him by limiting crossover support from non-Republican voters.

Cassidy and a supporting super PAC spent more than $21 million on advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact — more than Letlow and Fleming combined. His campaign attacked Letlow for voicing support for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in 2020 while interviewing for a university presidency, labeling her "Liberal Letlow." Those attacks did not produce the result Cassidy needed. In his concession speech in Baton Rouge, Cassidy, without naming Trump, said that leaders who demand absolute loyalty and use "the levers of power" to control others "are not about serving us" and are "not qualified to be a leader." He also said: "You don't pout. You don't whine. You don't claim that an election was stolen from you."