Early voting is underway in Louisiana's June 27 Republican Senate runoff, with President Trump pressing his advantage behind Rep. Julia Letlow after his preferred candidate buried incumbent Bill Cassidy in the May primary.
Cassidy is already gone. He took 24.8 percent of the vote on May 16, finishing a distant third behind Letlow's 44.8 and state Treasurer John Fleming's 28.3, becoming the highest-profile casualty yet of Trump's effort to hold Republicans accountable for the second impeachment vote. Trump made no effort to hide his satisfaction. "His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend," Trump wrote on Truth Social after the results, "and it's nice to see that his political career is OVER!"
With Cassidy dispatched, Letlow and Fleming head into a June 27 runoff with early voting now running through June 20. Two post-primary polls show Letlow ahead by double digits. Harper Polling put her up 52 to 35 percent among Republican likely voters in a May 18-19 survey of 457 registered voters; a Kaplan Strategies survey showed the same 52 percent for Letlow against 37 for Fleming, with 10 percent undecided. Strip the undecideds from the Harper numbers and it reaches 58 to 42.
Trump's backing is more than social media posts. Five sitting Republican senators have endorsed Letlow since the primary: Jim Banks, Katie Britt, Bernie Moreno, Tim Sheehy, and Rick Scott, adding institutional weight to a race where the president's preference was already unambiguous. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is in her corner as well. Letlow entered the race in January only after Trump personally urged her to run, posting "RUN, JULIA, RUN!!" on Truth Social, two days before she formally announced. She had not previously announced plans to challenge Cassidy.
Fleming is not conceding the race. The former congressman and medical doctor who served in Trump's first administration challenged Letlow to three primetime televised debates after the primary and has pressed ethics allegations hard. He accused her of facing more than 210 insider-trading counts under review by the House Ethics Committee, along with alleged falsification of FEC filings. Letlow declined additional debates, saying Fleming wanted a do-over after a poor showing in an earlier radio debate hosted by Moon Griffon, and disputed the ethics accusations entirely. Fleming has also framed the contest as a choice between two different kinds of Republican, telling KNOE he offers genuine conservative experience that Letlow lacks. The endorsement roster has made that argument a steep climb.
The Cassidy result is the number that will echo past June 27. He was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump following January 6, and the only one who appeared on a 2026 ballot rather than retiring or losing in an earlier cycle. He carried Louisiana with 59 percent in 2020. Finishing with barely a quarter of Republican primary ballots, behind two challengers in his own state, is the clearest evidence yet of what defying Trump costs when the president decides to settle accounts before an election.
A Letlow victory closes the loop on that reckoning. It would put a loyal Trump ally in a seat held by one of his most persistent Senate critics, and it would make her the first Republican woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana, a fact her campaign has leaned into throughout the race. In a primary where Trump's endorsement functions as the defining credential, that loyalty argument has carried most of the weight.
Whether Fleming can erase a 15-point polling deficit in a final sprint, without Trump's backing and against a well-funded opponent with the governor and half the Senate Republican caucus behind her, will determine whether June 27 is a rout or a real race. Ballots cast this week will be the first signal.
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