(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. succeeded in their efforts to defeat Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary, a signal of the enduring strength of the president’s hold on his party despite an unpopular war and soaring gas prices.
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Cassidy was one of seven GOP senators in 2021 who voted to convict Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 that year. He placed last in a three-way race Saturday against Representative Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by both Trump and a Kennedy-linked political action committee, and State Treasurer John Fleming.
“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump said of Cassidy on social media late Saturday.
With 92.3% of ballots tallied, Letlow has 44.8% of the vote and Fleming has 28.3%. Cassidy trailed with 24.7% of the vote.
Letlow and Fleming will advance to a runoff next month. Whoever wins that contest is virtually assured victory in November in the deep red state. In his reelection race in 2020, just months before his vote to convict Trump, Cassidy won 59% of the vote.
In a primary season where Trump is crusading to vanquish members of his party with whom he’s been at odds, the Louisiana race comes just days before the president tries to oust another Republican foe, Representative Thomas Massie, in Kentucky. But Trump has also opted so far to stay out of a hard-fought Texas runoff later this month between incumbent Senator John Cornyn, a traditional conservative, and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is more politically aligned with the president.
Massie, who faces a primary that has become the most expensive of its kind, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that’s he’s confident he will prevail on Tuesday despite a string of social-media insults from Trump and fundraising by Trump allies such as billionaires Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer.
“I think it’s going to help my fundraising,” Massie said. “People don’t like this.”
With state polls showing Massie with a slight lead, the congressman said, “That’s why the president is losing sleep and tweeting about me.”
Trump’s success in defeating Cassidy left the Louisiana senator defiant: “Let me just set the record straight. Our country is not about one individual, it is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution.”
“If someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves, they’re not about serving us,” he added.
Trump has attacked Cassidy for his 2021 vote and his opposition to some aspects of his agenda, particularly vaccine and other health policies pushed by Kennedy. Trump recently blamed Cassidy for thwarting his nomination of wellness influencer Casey Means as surgeon general. Means is a longtime ally of Kennedy’s, and Cassidy had questioned her stance on vaccinations.
On Saturday morning, Trump continued his attacks, calling Cassidy a “a disloyal disaster” on Truth Social. He later congratulated Letlow on her first-place finish.
In his concession speech Cassidy said: “I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.”
Even with the tensions, Cassidy had run ads featuring images of Trump, praising top White House issues that the senator had supported including the president’s massive tax package enacted last year, while casting Letlow as insufficiently conservative.
The outcome also notches a high-profile win for Kennedy’s political operation, which supported Letlow and opposed Cassidy in the race. The two men have repeatedly clashed over nominations and the department’s changes to vaccine policy. With certainty of his departure, Cassidy could make the health secretary’s job even more difficult as he finishes out his term with an eye to his legacy and priorities.
Cassidy’s departure will also leave a leadership vacuum for the GOP atop the Senate health committee next year. The panel oversees health agencies and confirmations for key leadership positions at the agencies, and Cassidy brought his medical expertise to the role. He has built a reputation as a healthcare policy wonk willing to work across the aisle.
Two other Republican senators who broke with Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, remain in the Senate. Collins, who represents a state Trump lost in 2024, has largely avoided the president’s wrath while she fights for her political life in one of the most competitive races of the midterms. Murkowski won reelection in 2022.
“You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him you’re going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “There’s no room in this party to destroy his agenda or to destroy him or his family as a Republican,” Graham said. “It’s just a reality.”
–With assistance from Tony Czuczka and Se Young Lee.
(Updates with Massie, Graham quotes beginning in seventh paragraph.)
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