{"id":430,"date":"2026-05-16T10:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=430"},"modified":"2026-05-16T10:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:34:17","slug":"gop-senator-who-defied-trump-on-impeachment-faces-voters-five-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"GOP senator who defied Trump on impeachment faces voters, five years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, is in danger of losing his primary.<\/strong><\/p>

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If he loses on Saturday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) will be the first sitting senator to be defeated in a primary since 2017. (Tyler Kaufman\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Sen. Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial for his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.<\/p>\n

On Saturday it could cost him his seat.<\/p>\n

Cassidy is up for reelection for the first time since his impeachment trial vote. He faces two primary challengers: Rep. Julia Letlow, whom Trump has endorsed, and John Fleming, the state treasurer, who has cast himself as the true conservative in the race. The top two candidates will advance to a runoff if no one wins a majority of the vote in Saturday\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n

The primary is the latest test of Trump\u2019s power to take revenge on Republicans who defy him. Five Republican state senators in Indiana who had bucked the president by refusing to redraw the state\u2019s congressional districts lost primaries this month to Trump-backed challengers, demonstrating the danger that Cassidy is facing.<\/p>\n

Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, would be the first sitting senator to lose a primary since 2017. His campaign and an allied super PAC, Louisiana Freedom Fund, have spent nearly $22 million on ads, according to the tracking firm AdImpact \u2014 more than Letlow, Fleming and their allies combined.<\/p>\n

Letlow has reminded voters relentlessly in ads that she is the only candidate Trump has endorsed \u2014 but she has not cleared the field. Roger F. Villere Jr., a Republican National Committee member and a former state party chair who has not endorsed in the race, said some Republican voters \u201cstill don\u2019t have the comfort level in Letlow that you would think they\u2019d have with Trump\u2019s endorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think any of the three could be in the runoff and any of the three could win the race,\u201d Villere said.<\/p>\n

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Rep. Julia Letlow (R) speaks with constituents in Hammond, Louisiana, on May 6. (Emily Kask\/For The Washington Post)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Fleming, a former congressman who went on to serve as White House deputy chief of staff during Trump\u2019s first term, has cast his record as more conservative than Letlow\u2019s or Cassidy\u2019s. He has become enough of a threat that a super PAC supporting Letlow has run ads criticizing him.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s primary is the first that Louisiana is holding since a new state law took effect instituting separate Democratic and Republican primaries in congressional elections. The state previously used a \u201cjungle primary\u201d system in which all candidates appeared on the same ballot regardless of party, followed by a runoff between the top two finishers if none of them won a majority of the vote.<\/p>\n

The new system allows unaffiliated voters to vote in either primary. Cassidy estimated that such \u201cno party\u201d voters could make up as much as a quarter of Republican primary voters \u2014 but he said that his campaign was hearing from voters bewildered by the new system and that he feared they would be disenfranchised.<\/p>

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\u201cPeople are calling my office to say they tried to vote for me but they could not,\u201d Cassidy told reporters Friday.<\/p>\n

Trey Williams, a spokesman for the Louisiana secretary of state\u2019s office, said the office had conducted an extensive campaign to educate the public about the new system and train poll workers. The Letlow and Fleming campaigns said they had not heard of their supporters experiencing similar problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guidelines have been clearly communicated, and we fully trust election officials across the state to ensure voters understand what\u2019s required under Louisiana\u2019s closed primary system,\u201d Katherine Thordahl, a Letlow campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Trump was acquitted in his 2021 impeachment trial after the Senate voted 57-43 to convict him, falling short of the two-thirds threshold needed. Just three of the seven Republicans who voted to convict remain in the Senate: Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who fought off a primary challenge in 2022; Susan Collins (Maine); and Cassidy.<\/p>\n

Unlike Collins or Murkowski, Cassidy has rarely bucked Trump since he returned to the White House. Cassidy even voted to confirm Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year despite concerns about Kennedy\u2019s criticisms of vaccines \u2014 a deeply personal issue to the senator, a physician who has described watching patients die of diseases that vaccines can prevent.<\/p>\n

While Cassidy has avoided antagonizing Trump, he has not disavowed his vote to convict him. Instead, he has tried to persuade Republican voters to overlook it, campaigning on his record delivering for one of the poorest states in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want somebody who works well with President Trump, you vote for Bill Cassidy,\u201d Cassidy said last week in an interview in Baton Rouge. \u201cHe may not like me, but he had signed into law four bills that I either wrote or negotiated in the last four months.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Letlow said it was clear Republicans in the state have not forgiven Cassidy.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven to this day, six years later, they\u2019re still talking about it,\u201d she said last week in an interview in Madisonville. \u201cThey\u2019re still just as angry and feel like he wavered and turned his back on something that was very important to them.\u201d<\/p>

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Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, is in danger of losing his primary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nGOP senator who defied Trump on impeachment faces voters, five years later - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=430\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"GOP senator who defied Trump on impeachment faces voters, five years later - Moving Insider USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sen. 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