Cassidy’s bid to win nomination for third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after January 6 insurrection
Chris Stein at The Guardian:
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Donald Trump to oust the incumbent. Cassidy’s bid to win the Republican party’s nomination for a third term in the deep-red state was imperiled by his decision to vote in favor of Trump’s conviction after the January 6 insurrection. In what was widely seen as an effort to rehabilitate his standing with the president, 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, flying in the face of the senator’s support for immunizations and training as a physician.
Earlier this year, Trump encouraged the US representative Julia Letlow to enter the Senate race, and offered his endorsement in a bid to unseat Cassidy 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, against John Fleming, the state treasurer and former US representative, who received 28.3%. Cassidy came third with 24.4%. The race now heads to a runoff scheduled for 27 June.
“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 the president, 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.”
[...] 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 fruitless 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. 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 his policies as secretary. He also opposed Trump’s attempt to have wellness influencer Casey Means confirmed as US surgeon general, leading Trump to blame the senator for having to withdraw her nomination.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) loses the primary for a chance at another Senate term, as Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming (R) advance to the GOP primary runoff.
Had the state kept the old all-party jungle primary format, Cassidy may have had a chance to advance.
His defeat shows that occasional defections from Trump’s agenda will get punished by GOP primary voters.
