Louisiana Senate Primary Election
Representative Julia Letlow and John Fleming, the Louisiana state treasurer, advanced to a runoff election next month. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana’s incumbent Republican senator, who had been in Donald Trump’s crosshairs since he voted to convict during the President’s impeachment trial in the wake of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, failed to garner enough votes to move on. Trump accused Cassidy, a physician by training, of being “disloyal” for declining to support a MAHA-aligned nominee for Surgeon General. Cassidy also repeatedly clashed with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., over his attempts to overhaul the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to reduce federal vaccine recommendations.
Trump endorsed Letlow in the race, calling her a “TOTAL WINNER.” Letlow’s husband, Luke Letlow, was elected to Congress in 2020, but he died of COVID-19 shortly before he was able to take office; Letlow, a former academic administrator, won the special election to fill his seat. Cassidy’s other challenger was John Fleming, who served as a White House deputy chief of staff during the first Trump term. Fleming accused Letlow’s campaign chair, Ralph Abraham, of offering him a position as deputy director of the C.D.C. in return for dropping out of the race; Abraham has denied the accusation.
On the Democratic side, Jamie Davis, Jr., a third-generation Louisiana farmer who has emphasized progressive issues, including raising the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy, and passing Medicare for All, advanced to the runoff. He will face either Nick Albares, a nonprofit executive who previously served as a policy adviser to John Bel Edwards, the Democratic former governor, or Gary Crockett, a retired Navy veteran who has stressed the need for “practical” leadership.
Louisiana House Races Postponed
Primary elections for the state’s House races were scheduled for Saturday, but were suspended after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, a landmark decision finding that lawmakers had illegally used racial demographics to redraw congressional districts in 2024. The decision, which was issued last month, torpedoed a core provision in the Voting Rights Act and allowed Southern states to quickly redraw congressional maps to excise majority-minority districts, in which racial minorities make up more than fifty per cent of the population. Earlier this week, Louisiana’s state Senate voted to advance a new congressional map that would eliminate one of the state’s two Black-majority congressional districts, likely giving the G.O.P. an extra seat in the 2026 midterms.
