{"id":211012,"date":"2026-05-18T08:29:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T08:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/republican-louisiana-senator-bill-cassidy-loses-primary-after-trump-intervenes-to-oust-him-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T08:29:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T08:29:47","slug":"republican-louisiana-senator-bill-cassidy-loses-primary-after-trump-intervenes-to-oust-him-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/republican-louisiana-senator-bill-cassidy-loses-primary-after-trump-intervenes-to-oust-him-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy loses primary after Trump intervenes to oust him – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cassidy\u2019s bid to win nomination for third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after January 6 insurrection
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<\/a> to oust the incumbent.
Cassidy\u2019s bid to win the Republican party\u2019s nomination for a third term in the deep-red state was imperiled by his decision to vote in favor of Trump\u2019s 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<\/a>\u2019s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, flying in the face of the senator\u2019s 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 \u201ca disloyal disaster\u201d and \u201ca terrible guy\u201d on social media. Trump criticized the senator\u2019s impeachment vote and said \u201che\u2019s going to get CLOBBERED\u201d, adding that Letlow was \u201ca winner who will NEVER let you down\u201d.
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.
\u201cI 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<\/a>,\u201d Letlow told supporters in the evening, flanked by her two young children. \u201cThere is no greater endorsement than the endorsement of President Trump. We\u2019ll always be singing that from the mountaintops.\u201d
Invoking Cassidy\u2019s impeachment vote, Letlow said: \u201cLouisiana was not pleased with that vote. They took that as a sign that he had turned his back on the Louisiana<\/a> voters.\u201d
Speaking to supporters after the result was known, Cassidy made a thinly veiled reference to the president, saying, \u201cInsults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, and I find that people of character and integrity don\u2019t spend their time attacking people on the internet.\u201d
\u201cOur country is not about one individual,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.\u201d
Cassidy\u2019s defeat underscores the perils Republicans run when they break with Trump on major issues. Earlier this month, five of the seven Republican Indiana state senators who halted a Trump-backed effort to gerrymander the state in Republicans\u2019 favor lost their primaries<\/a>. In North Carolina, Republicans are in a high-stakes battle to keep hold of one of their US Senate seats because Thom Tillis has opted to retire<\/a>, after breaking with Trump last year over his top domestic policy bill.
Louisiana\u2019s 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<\/a> Trump\u2019s attempt to have wellness influencer Casey Means confirmed as US surgeon general, leading Trump to blame the senator for having to withdraw her nomination.
Changes to Louisiana\u2019s primary system likely worsened the prospects for Cassidy\u2019s political survival. In 2024, Republican governor Jeff Landry, a prominent Trump supporter, worked with the legislature to change the rules of the state\u2019s US Senate<\/a> primaries so that candidates are nominated only by party members and unaffiliated voters.
With Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cassidy\u2019s bid to win nomination for third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after January 6 insurrectionThe 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\u2019s bid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}