Rep. Julia Letlow said Tuesday she would run for Senate in Louisiana after President Donald Trump urged her to challenge Sen. Bill Cassidy in the Republican primary.
Letlow announced her campaign in a video after speaking of her plans at a Tuesday breakfast hosted by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report. The video does not mention Cassidy by name but implicitly criticizes him for not being conservative enough.
“A state as conservative as ours?” Letlow says in the video. “We shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote when the pressure’s on. Louisiana deserves conservative champions — leaders who will not flinch.”
Letlow called Cassidy on Tuesday morning to tell him she was running, according to Cassidy.
“She said she respected me and that I had done a good job,” Cassidy wrote on X. “I will continue to do a good job when I win re-election.”
Cassidy is one of three Republicans still in the Senate who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, when the president was accused of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He has voted overwhelmingly in support of Trump’s agenda, and he played a crucial role in confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s health secretary despite his concerns about Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines.
Trump on Saturday night had publicly encouraged Letlow to run.
“Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!”
Letlow won her House seat in a special election in 2021 after her husband, Luke Letlow, who was elected in 2020, died of complications from covid-19 days before he was set to take office.
John Fleming, the Louisiana state treasurer and a former congressman, is also running in the May 16 primary. But Letlow’s decision to run with Trump’s backing further complicates Cassidy’s path to reelection. The primary would go to a June 27 runoff if no candidate gets a majority of the vote.
Cassidy is not the only Republican senator facing a serious primary challenge without Trump’s support. In Texas, state attorney general Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt are running against Sen. John Cornyn, whom Trump has declined to endorse despite entreaties from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota).
Thune and Sen. Tim Scott (South Carolina), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, endorsed Cassidy last year. Thune joined Cassidy on Friday at a restaurant in Baton Rouge to discuss the benefits of the tax and spending law that Trump signed last year.
Unlike Texas, Democrats are not seriously targeting Louisiana, and Republicans face little risk of losing the Senate seat in November regardless of who wins the primary. Trump won Louisiana by 22 points in 2024.
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