President Donald Trump has blown up another Senate GOP primary, throwing Republicans into turmoil and giving Senate Majority Leader John Thune a blistering headache.
Trump’s decision to endorse GOP Rep. Julia Letlow – who isn’t even formally in the Louisiana Senate race — over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) puts the president at loggerheads with Thune, meddling in a safe Republican state. Thune has endorsed Cassidy, and the pair were in Baton Rouge together last week.
All signs indicate that Letlow is going to get in the race following Trump’s pronouncement. Several Senate GOP and White House sources say Letlow wanted the endorsement and made clear she wouldn’t get in the race without a public nod from Trump. The 44-year-old Letlow was elected in 2021 after her husband died from Covid-19 shortly before taking office.
Trump gave Thune a heads-up Friday night, telling the GOP leader that he was likely to back Letlow, according to two people briefed on the phone call. Thune said that would endanger the president’s legislative priorities, such as health care and confirming a new Federal Reserve chair, and noted Cassidy’s role as HELP Committee chair. Thune has his own politics to play and will surely stick by Cassidy.
But Trump clearly didn’t care about Thune’s entreaties.
Retribution. This is all part of Trump’s obsession with revenge. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Even though Cassidy supported Trump’s controversial nominees — notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary — Trump hasn’t let that go.
The Senate Leadership Fund, Thune’s super PAC, hasn’t endorsed in the race. SLF has no plans to get involved, a source familiar with its decision-making told us. The seat will stay red anyway, and SLF doesn’t want to get in a spending war with the constellation of pro-Trump political entities during the GOP primary.
Now that Letlow is getting in, the race is thrown into flux in more ways than one. Seeing that there’s a fractured field, does former Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) jump in too? Will the other candidates in the primary – former Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), state Sen. Blake Miguez and state Rep. Julie Emerson – stay in?
Then there’s the 68-year-old Cassidy, who was elected to the Senate in 2014 after three terms in the House.
“I’m proudly running for re-election as a principled conservative who gets things done for the people of Louisiana,” Cassidy wrote on social media on Saturday. “If Congresswoman Letlow decides to run, I am confident I will win.”
As of his October filing, Cassidy had $9.5 million in the bank. Letlow had nearly $2.3 million. But cash won’t be a problem if Letlow gets in – she’s likely to get a boost from pro-Trump super PACs.
It’s hard to predict what this move by Trump could mean for other Senate races, namely Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) uphill battle to keep his seat in the Lone Star State. Thune said last week that Trump won’t make an endorsement in that primary.
But there are significant differences between Cornyn’s race and Cassidy’s. Republicans are confident that they will win Louisiana regardless of the GOP candidate. The same doesn’t go for Texas, where Republicans think Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) could lose to a Democrat. Trump and some of his political allies are close to both Paxton and Hunt.
