Cassidy loses Louisiana primary after years of clashes with Trump

Bill Cassidy’s loss in Louisiana did more than end a two-decade career in elected office. It showed how, inside Donald Trump’s Republican Party, a single act of defiance can outweigh seniority, committee power and a resume built over years in Baton Rouge and Washington.

Cassidy, a physician who first won a seat in the U.S. House in 2008 and later the U.S. Senate in 2014 before winning reelection in 2020, finished third in the Louisiana Republican primary on Saturday with about 25 percent of the vote. Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow led with about 45 percent, while state Treasurer John Fleming took about 28 percent, sending Letlow and Fleming to the June 27 runoff and ending Cassidy’s bid to stay in the Senate.

The result was the clearest possible verdict on the vote that has shadowed Cassidy ever since Feb. 13, 2021, when he joined six other Republican senators in voting to convict Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Cassidy defended that vote with a line that would come back to define him in Louisiana: “Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person.”

That break triggered an immediate backlash from the state party. The Louisiana Republican Party’s executive committee unanimously censured Cassidy in February 2021, and the rupture never healed. Through this year’s campaign, Trump kept Cassidy’s impeachment vote at the center of the race, calling him “disloyal” and throwing his support behind Letlow. In a primary where loyalty to Trump functioned as the dominant test, Cassidy’s long record in office could not overcome the judgment attached to that one decision.

The outcome also carried broader political weight. Cassidy was one of the few remaining Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump, and his defeat underscored how little room remains for dissent in a party still organized around the former president’s demands for allegiance. The runoff now pits two Trump-aligned contenders against each other, leaving no place in the Louisiana contest for the one Republican who chose constitutional duty over party unity.

Letlow’s rise adds another layer to the race. She first won her House seat in a 2021 special election after her husband, Luke Letlow, died before taking office, and she now enters the runoff with Trump’s backing and momentum from a primary that turned on loyalty as much as ideology.

Cassidy’s exit closes a career that reached from the Louisiana state senate to the halls of Congress, and, for other Republicans, it serves as a warning. In Trump’s GOP, dissent is not merely remembered. It can become the most durable line on a ballot.