Julia Letlow

Editor’s note: This story is the third in a series of profiles of major candidates in the U.S. Senate race.

President Donald Trump was playing host at the Congressional Ball at the White House one evening in December.

But before the festivities began, Trump had a special announcement: U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow had just gotten engaged with her beau, Baton Rouge lawyer/lobbyist Kevin Ainsworth.

“Julia, where are you? Come on up,” Trump called out.

She reached the stage.

“Do you want to say something?” he asked.

Letlow shook her head, clearly caught off guard by Trump’s invitation.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Trump encouraged her, grinning.

“Thank you so much...to the best president...of my entire life...in the entire United States of America!” she exclaimed haltingly.

Letlow cruised to victory without having to break a sweat in her three elections to the House. She is well-liked in Washington, winning a seat on the influential House Appropriations Committee and securing endorsements from Trump, Gov. Jeff Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill and other Republicans as she tries to unseat U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a fellow Republican.

But Letlow has seemed uncomfortable at times in the spotlight that comes with this big test. She has rejected televised debates and mostly avoided the press – and the scrutiny that comes with it – during the campaign.

Letlow, 45, now faces two key questions: Is Trump’s support enough to power her to victory?

And how does she square her embrace of Trump now, when she previously decried the divisive politics that Trump practices?

Letlow is challenging Cassidy in the May 16 Republican primary, along with state Treasurer John Fleming and Mark Spencer. Early voting begins on May 2 and ends on May 9.

The top two finishers in the primary will advance to a Republican runoff on June 27.

The three candidates in the Democratic primary are Nick Albares, Jamie Davis and Gary Crockett.

Personal tragedies and triumphs

All stories about Letlow’s political career must begin with her former husband Luke.

They met in Monroe in 1995 when he was in ninth grade, a year ahead of her at Ouachita Christian School. But the relationship didn’t flourish until 2012, when Letlow was living in New Orleans and helping residents improve their communication skills at Tulane’s school of medicine. They married a year later.

Letlow returned to the University of Louisiana at Monroe to work for the provost and figured she’d climb the ladder there and raise a family.

By August 2020, she had risen high enough at the university to apply to be its president. She was one of six semi-finalists but didn’t get the job.

That same year, U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham decided to forgo reelection to the 5th Congressional District. Luke, his chief of staff, ran for the seat and won on Dec. 5 that year. He died of COVID on Dec. 29.

Letlow announced 16 days later that she would vie for the seat, “to pick up the torch that my husband left behind,” as she explained later that year.

“I’ve never been more sure about a decision since the day I married Luke,” Letlow said in the interview. “I’ll go back to my faith. I needed to have that peace that this was the right decision moving forward. I’ve never felt more ready, more equipped, more determined to serve.”

Luke’s death was not the first tragedy for Letlow.

When she was a junior at UL-M, she lost her younger brother Jeremy, 17, to a car accident.

Letlow read widely to help her cope with the heartbreak and found plenty of writing on the loss of a parent or a child – but not on siblings.

She tackled the subject in her masters thesis from UL-M and in her 2011 doctoral dissertation from the University of South Florida, “Giving Meaning to Grief: The Role of Rituals and Stories in Coping with Sudden Family Loss.”

“It was cathartic,” Letlow recalled in 2021. “I could write about losing my brother and that helped me through that season of life. I was also able to contribute to where there was a deficit in the literature on sibling grief and possibly help other surviving siblings who were hurting as well.”

A cautious campaign

Letlow easily won the 2021 special election and reelection in 2022 and 2024.

She did not face tough questions in her three elections to the House. That was in part because she steered clear of the three Hanna newspapers in northeast Louisiana, according to publisher Sam Hanna. She ended the 27-year tradition where the representative from the 5th Congressional District answered questions once a week from KEDM-FM, the public radio station in Monroe, according to the station news director. She’s never agreed to appear with conservative talk radio host Moon Griffon on his program, Griffon said.

With only a handful of exceptions, reporters have not been allowed to cover her Senate campaign appearances.

Letlow’s approach with the media contrasts with that of Cassidy and Fleming during the race.

Cassidy holds regular press conferences with reporters and gives media outlets a heads-up before many of his public appearances.

Fleming, running an under-financed campaign, talks to reporters at every opportunity.

Cassidy proposed three statewide televised debates that Fleming quickly accepted. Letlow has agreed to only a debate on the program of Griffon, who regularly lampoons Cassidy as “Psycho Bill.”

“I like people to like me,” she said in a 2024 interview. “I need tougher skin. That’s been the most challenging part for me – making everyone happy.”

Earlier this month, Letlow had a smile on her face as she spilled out of a white SUV along with her two young children.

It was spring break, and Letlow had brought her kids to the next stop in her Senate campaign, a fundraiser at the Diamond Grill in downtown Alexandria.

Candidates typically alert local media outlets about upcoming appearances, to be able to offer a quick soundbite or two before attending their event.

But Letlow’s campaign hadn’t told anyone but potential donors.

With several energetic steps – Letlow was the state 2A high school long jump champ in 1998 – she reached the front door at the Diamond Grill and disappeared inside.

A consensus builder

In a 2021 interview, Letlow described a political philosophy that harkened back to the pre-Trump Republican Party.

“How about the [Ronald] Reagan days when you would just go have a beer with someone and sit down, look eye to eye and say, ‘Let’s talk this through. We may not leave agreeing. We may agree to disagree,’” she said.

In the 2024 interview, she remained committed to that approach.

“The biggest challenge we face is the divisive language,” she said, without mentioning Trump. “We need to tone that down. We need to start healing.”

Letlow was out of step with Trump when she was asked who won the 2020 presidential election.

“Biden,” she said without hesitation. “He’s our president.”

Trump, of course, has repeatedly claimed that Joe Biden took office only because of fraud.

Letlow disclosed that one of her heroes was Lindy Boggs, who succeeded her husband Hale in the House after he died in a plane crash in 1973. She went on to represent New Orleans until 1991 as a Democrat.

“I always heard she was a consensus builder,” Letlow said. “Anytime you see me wearing a scarf, it’s a nod to her. I truly believe in working across the aisle.”

In January 2025, Letlow moved to Baton Rouge. Because of redistricting, she now represented Louisiana’s capital city, and Kevin Ainsworth lived there.

By July of that year, her next move had become the biggest question in Louisiana politics: Would she run for reelection as a heavy favorite, challenge Cassidy or apply to be the next president of LSU?

In September 2025, she announced she wouldn’t seek to be LSU’s president.

Speculation continued, however, about whether she would take on Cassidy, who had lost favor with Trump and many conservatives after voting to convict the president on impeachment charges of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

Trump settled Letlow’s plans on Jan. 17 this year when he announced his support for her. She jumped into the race three days later, forgoing reelection to her House seat.

Cassidy soon hit Letlow for having pledged to expand UL-M’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs when she applied to be the university’s president six years earlier.

In an interview, Letlow wanted to focus on the positive.

“What I said (in 2020) was DEI was presented to us at the time as a tool that would encourage people to go achieve the American dream, that would help lift people up and not bring them down,” Letlow said. “I’ve always believed that people should be hired based on merit. I used the word anonymity in my interview if you watch the whole thing, that people shouldn’t be elevated on anything other than merit. DEI became something so much more. It became hijacked by the left.”

Since Trump returned to office, Letlow has consistently voted with the president on his initiatives.

Trump demands loyalty. Would she simply be a yes-person for him?

“If there was any issue where I had a concern, I would pick up the phone and call him and talk to him privately about it,” she said. “I would not bash him publicly.”

After all of her experiences, Letlow said she is ready to be Louisiana’s next senator.

“I would never have imagined this small-town girl from northeast Louisiana would be able to work hard to build a relationship with a former and now sitting U.S. president and to be able to deliver for Louisiana,” she said. “That’s what’s so important to me about this race and his endorsement. He knows he needs someone he can work with who will work with him and not against him and also will work with future administrations.”