Julia Letlow

Louisiana’s contentious U.S. Senate primary race enters its final week centered on the same question as when it began: Which Republican candidate best aligns with President Donald Trump?

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, state Treasurer John Fleming and U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow — each is relentlessly claiming to have the preeminent pro-Trump credentials.

At the same time, all three of them have been broadcasting TV ads and making campaign appearances where they try to undermine the others’ pro-Trump claims.

“They respect the power that Trump has with Republican rank-and-file, even though Trump has diminished in popularity with independent voters and has zero support among Democrats. His approval rating still runs around 80% among Republicans,” said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Election day is Saturday throughout Louisiana for the Senate race and, in different parts of the state, for elections to the Public Service Commission, the Louisiana Supreme Court and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Voters throughout Louisiana will also decide whether to approve five constitutional amendments.

Voters will see candidates for U.S. House races on the ballot, but Gov. Jeff Landry canceled those elections after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled recently that Louisiana’s congressional map is unconstitutional. Secretary of State Nancy Landry said it was too late to remove those races from the ballot, but her office won’t count the House votes.

A fourth Republican candidate is Mark Spencer, a business owner in Belle Chasse who is running as a “Guns and Bible” conservative.

Three little-known and under-financed candidates are running in the Democratic primary on Saturday: Gary Crockett, a business owner who lives in New Orleans; Nick Albares, a policy analyst who lives in New Orleans; and Jamie Davis, a farmer in northeast Louisiana. The top two finishers in the Democratic primary — if no one wins at least 50% — will compete in a Democratic runoff on June 27.

Democrats are hoping that the huge turnout on Friday at the State Capitol against Republican plans to eliminate one or both of Louisiana’s two Democratic congressional seats will translate into a big Democratic turnout on May 16.

Burnishing their MAGA credentials

The latest polling in the race shows Letlow in the lead, or tied with Fleming, in Saturday’s semi-closed Republican primary, where no-party voters can choose to vote for the Republican candidates or the Democrat candidates. The top two Republican finishers — since no candidate is expected to win over 50% — will face off in a June 27 party runoff.

Letlow, of course, can make the strongest pro-Trump case because she has his endorsement, and that support caused her in January to give up an easy House reelection campaign to try to unseat Cassidy.

“I stand firm in support, shoulder to shoulder with President Trump,” Letlow said during Tuesday’s radio debate with Fleming. “I would never turn my back on him.”

That final comment was a dig at Cassidy’s decision to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges that he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters. Trump and his supporters see that as a betrayal because Cassidy took that vote two months after he won reelection in 2020 with Trump’s strong backing.

Letlow has also noted that Cassidy subsequently said Trump shouldn’t run for president in 2024 because he couldn’t win. Cassidy also suggested that he might run against Trump on a No Labels campaign if Trump did.

In 2023, Cassidy said he wouldn’t vote for Trump but said in an interview this year that he did.

Cassidy has noted repeatedly during this year’s campaign that he voted 90% of the time with Trump in his first term, and he has said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not have been confirmed as Trump’s health secretary without his support.

“I don’t really think he likes me very much,” Cassidy said of Trump on Monday, “but we work really well together.”

Cassidy has said throughout the campaign that Trump has signed into law four bills during his second term that the senator either sponsored or that contained parts of legislation that he authored.

Fleming has noted repeatedly that he endorsed Trump when he initially ran for president in 2016 and that he worked for Trump during his first administration, including the final 10 months as the president’s deputy chief of staff.

“I was there on Jan. 6,” Fleming said during the radio debate. “You know what? There were a lot of resignations in that White House after January 6. I stayed there and would not leave my post. I was there until the very end.”

Fleming has a prominent highway billboard in Baton Rouge that features a photo of him and Trump together, both with their thumbs up.

Attack ads fly

In recent days, it has become clear that Fleming and Letlow want to knock each other out during the primary and face Cassidy in the runoff.

Various polls show both Letlow and Fleming would easily defeat Cassidy in a head-to-head race, while a Letlow-Fleming runoff would be close.

On Thursday, Letlow called on Fleming to resign from his recently revealed side work for the McKeon Group, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm.

“Louisiana deserves public servants who are focused on serving our people,” she said in a statement.

On Friday, Fleming said he’s allowed to have part-time, outside employment.

Fleming’s personal financial disclosure report shows that he earned $41,000 from McKeon in 2024. In an interview, he said he now earns about $12,000 a year to provide “advice” to McKeon and that none of McKeon’s clients are in Louisiana. Officials from the company didn’t respond to a request for a comment.

Fleming, meanwhile, is broadcasting television ads that — echoing a Cassidy line — call her “Liberal Letlow” because her voting record on the scorecard of several outside groups is not as conservative as his was.

She has retorted that Trump is backing her because she’s a pro-MAGA conservative.

Outside groups associated with Landry — who has joined Trump in backing Letlow — are spending heavily on TV ads attacking Fleming.

“The whole process is dishonest,” Fleming said, noting that donations to the two groups — The Accountability Project and MAGA Energy — are not being disclosed.

Meanwhile, Fleming and Letlow spent more time attacking each other than Cassidy in Tuesday’s radio debate and accused each other of lying about their records.

“Julia, please don’t interrupt me,” Fleming said at one point.

Letlow criticized Fleming’s vote against the farm bill in 2014 when he was in the House. He said it contained wasteful spending.

She belittled him for not getting Trump’s endorsement after having worked with the president. He said they spoke recently, and Trump called him “fantastic.”

She called Fleming “a career politician.” He said he served one term as coroner of Webster Parish beginning in 1996 and then served eight years in the House beginning in 2009, before he was elected treasurer in 2023.

Fleming criticized Letlow for calling for the expansion of diversity, equity and inclusion policies when she interviewed to be president of the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She said she quickly learned that “the left completely hijacked it” and has voted against DEI policies in the House.

Fleming criticized Letlow for blaming her financial adviser for the failure to report more than 200 stock trades on a timely basis, saying it amounted to, “Well, the dog ate my homework.”