BATON ROUGE, La. — With his political future hanging in the balance and President Donald Trump looming large over Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary, Sen. Bill Cassidy spent the campaign’s final hours trying to hit a moving target.
During a campaign stop at a gun range on Friday, the incumbent senator — fighting for his political life against two Trump-aligned candidates — said his primary “is not me versus Donald Trump.”
“This is me fighting for the people of Louisiana,” he said.
When MS NOW asked if he regretted his vote to convict Trump following the president’s impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — a vote that set into motion the primary fight currently threatening his political career — Cassidy said he doesn’t sit around and think about what happened five years ago. “I’m focused on the future,” he said.
And when MS NOW pressed Cassidy on whether there’s room in the GOP for a Republican willing to cross Trump, he shot down the question.
“I’m gonna let you hold on that because I think you got a theme there,” Cassidy said, turning from reporters and walking toward the gun range. “So let me go shoot.”
In a race defined by Trump, closely watched by Trump, and playing out in a state that voted for Trump three times, Cassidy is choosing his words carefully. But instead of avoiding the topic entirely, he’s embracing it in his own way.
The Louisiana Republican said he’s the only candidate in the race “who’s ever had Donald Trump sign a bill into law,” pointing to his sponsorship of a measure that reclassified fentanyl as a schedule 1 drug and a separate bill that aimed to combat the opioid crisis.
“My opponent, she has never had a single piece of legislation signed into law,” Cassidy said. “I’ve had dozens.”
The strategy is a risky gamble for the incumbent senator, who’s fending off two Trump-affiliated candidates in a state that voted for the president by more than 18 percentage points in the 2024, 2020 and 2016 presidential elections. The race has taken on national interest, with onlookers across the country watching to see if a Republican can cross Trump and survive.
With his congressional career on the line, Cassidy is confident in the wager.
“I plan on winning,” Cassidy said. “It may go to a runoff. If it goes to a runoff, I’ll win in the runoff.”
He went on to shoot an AR-15 and a 9mm pistol, highlighting the suppressors on the guns after he championed a bill that eliminated a tax on silencers. He admired his target sheet showing five shots hitting the bullseye and one in the innermost ring.
“I wanted them all like right there, but that’s not too bad — I’m pretty pleased with that,” he told reporters, pointing to the bullseye. “You know what I’m saying? I’m real pleased with that.”
Whether Cassidy will be just as pleased when results begin to roll in on Saturday is another question.
Primary polls show Cassidy trailing both his Trump-associated opponents — Rep. Julia Letlow and former Rep. John Fleming — spelling trouble for Cassidy’s chances at a third term in Congress. If none of the candidates reach a majority vote, the top two vote-getters will head to a runoff.
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Letlow, a second-term congresswoman whom Trump hand-picked to challenge Cassidy, is a relative newcomer, after arriving on Capitol Hill in 2021 to succeed her late husband. But Letlow’s political fortunes have since skyrocketed since she secured Trump’s endorsement
“Highly Respected America First Congresswoman, Julia Letlow, of the wonderful State of Louisiana, is a Great Star, has been from the very beginning, and only gets better!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
But there’s also Fleming, the former congressman and Louisiana State Treasurer, who is a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and deputy chief of staff during Trump’s first administration. Despite not having the coveted endorsement, the MAGA loyalist has stressed his Trump credentials.
“I served in the Trump administration for four years. I was Trump’s deputy chief of staff for the last 10 months of his administration, his first one. And also, I was there Jan. 6,” Fleming said at a primary debate last week. “And you know what? There were a lot of resignations in that White House on Jan. 6. I stood there, stayed there, and did not leave my post in the White House. I was there to the very end.”
Trump has had his sights set on Cassidy since shortly after Jan. 6, when the Louisiana lawmaker was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump following his impeachment after the Capitol attack. Of that group, just three remain.
The tensions continued into last year, when Cassidy — a doctor by trade — raised doubts about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his vaccine skepticism after Trump nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
If Cassidy — the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — had voted against Kennedy for a preliminary committee vote, he would’ve been blocked. In the end, Cassidy supported Kennedy, but noted to Kennedy that he was “struggling with your nomination.”
Last month, Trump unleashed on Cassidy as the president’s pick to be the next surgeon general, Casey Means, stalled amid GOP opposition from Cassidy and others. Trump called Cassidy “a very disloyal person” and urged Louisiana residents to vote him “OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary.”
The recent opposition comes back to Cassidy’s core identity: A doctor. During his outing at the gun range on Friday, donning protective earmuffs and glasses, the physician-turned-politician spoke about the physics of the suppressors and how they protect people’s hearing.
Minutes after dodging a question about whether he regrets his vote to convict Trump, Cassidy said his experience as a doctor — gathering information, making decisions, and not looking back — guides everything he does.
“When you graduate from med school in 1983 and you’ve been a doctor ever since, that is the prism through which you use things, which is really good,” he told reporters. “As a doctor, you’re taught to serve people. You’re taught to listen to them, figure out what the issue is, digest it, observe, and then come up with an answer.”
“You make the answer, you live with it, you move on,” he continued. “You learn from a mistake, but you move on. And so, in one sense that’s insightful. You could probably look at like almost everything I do, and you can say there’s a doctor in him.”
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Syedah Asghar
Syedah Asghar covers Congress for MS NOW.