Louisiana

As of Jul 1, 2026

Bill Cassidy's defeat in the May 16 Republican primary was the first time an elected incumbent senator was denied renomination since Richard Lugar lost in Indiana in 2012. The proximate cause was his vote to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment trial, a choice the Louisiana GOP punished with roughly 75 percent of the primary vote going to his challengers. That outcome converted a Likely R rating into Solid R at Cook, Sabato, and Inside Elections. not because the general election got harder, but because the Republican nominee, whoever emerges from the June 27 runoff, inherits a seat that Democrats have no realistic path to contest. The runoff itself is the story. Rep. Julia Letlow carries Trump's endorsement; Treasurer John Fleming, a former Trump White House staffer, is competing for the same ideological lane by positioning himself as the more uncompromising of the two. Louisiana's congressional delegation was already among the most reliably conservative in the South, and this race will deliver a senator whose first loyalty is tested not against a Democratic opponent but against the internal sorting mechanism of a party that just ejected one of its more institutionalist members. For Cassidy, that institutionalism was most visible on the impeachment vote and in his support for the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, a record that extractive-industry states like Louisiana historically rewarded, not punished. The fact that it now costs you a Senate seat describes something concrete about which economic interests the next Louisiana senator will feel accountable to, and which they will not.