Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lasting political power will be tested in the Louisiana primaries on Saturday, as Sen. Bill Cassidy — a vocal critic of Kennedy and archenemy of the Make America Healthy Again movement — seeks re-election.
Kennedy and a host of loyalists and prominent conservative fundraisers have pooled their resources in an effort to unseat Cassidy, a physician who reluctantly cast a key vote to confirm Kennedy as Health and Human Services secretary, but who has since clashed with him publicly over his vaccine policy. He’s also drawn the ire of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, who want Cassidy gone for voting to convict Trump on impeachment grounds in 2021.
Now Cassidy sits in the path of the MAHA war machine, driven by longtime Kennedy ally and MAHA political action committee co-founder Tony Lyons, who pledged to raise $100 million for Republican races this year — including $1 million to support U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, Cassidy’s primary opponent.
“Cassidy has stood in the way of everything, just time after time,” Lyons said earlier this month on an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
“Bobby Kennedy has this incredible plan, this agenda to make us healthier,” he added. “And Cassidy is the one standing in the way. So we have to get rid of him.”
But it remains to be seen whether Lyons and the MAHA war machine have the same teeth today they had in 2024, when Lyons was among several high-profile donors pumping millions into Kennedy’s run for president, and eventually helped install him in Trump’s Cabinet.
Dwindling coffers
MAHA’s funding comes from its political action committee, rebranded from American Values 2024, the super PAC that supported Kennedy for president. Last June, Lyons and Limewire founder Mark Gorton, who have supported and helped finance Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work for years, founded MAHA PAC and announced they were setting their sights on the 2026 midterms.
But while Kennedy raised more than $50 million for his failed presidential bid, the PAC supporting his MAHA agenda as Trump’s secretary has raised far, far less. Missing from MAHA’s coffers are former Kennedy big spenders like Republican mega-donor Timothy Mellon, Kennedy’s former running mate Nicole Shanahan, and many of the other five- and six-figure donors within the anti-vaccine and alternative health communities who opened their wallets for Kennedy in 2024.
“It was one thing when Bobby was running for president; that was a moonshot mission. But this does not generate the same kind of urgency in the donors,” said one former American Values 2024 donor who spoke to MS NOW on condition of anonymity.
“It’s been uniquely difficult to raise money for the MAHA PAC,” the donor added.
As a result, Lyons has turned to a smaller number of donors, some of whom seem at odds with the stated goals of MAHA PAC.
According to its Federal Election Commission filings, MAHA PAC received $50,000 from Venni Capital LLC, an investment firm with little footprint outside an address shared with a New York drug company, Chartwell Pharmaceuticals, which markets itself as “well-prepared to sell to government entities and supply state and federal contracts.”
Meanwhile, a $500,000 donation came in March from Botanic Tonics LLC, makers of “Feel Free,” a tonic containing kava and kratom — substances the Food and Drug Administration warns against and that state lawmakers are attempting to regulate or ban outright. Botanic Tonics has also been the target of widespread complaints on social media from people who say the product is addictive. Last year, a federal court approved the company’s $8.75 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit, claiming the company failed to warn consumers about the dangers of kratom. Botanic Tonics has denied any wrongdoing.
Kennedy himself has warned against kratom, and his own FDA announced steps to restrict it.
Yet MAHA PAC appears to rely heavily on Botanic Tonics’ money, even more than FEC filings suggest: According to two people familiar with the matter, the company pledged to continue donating $500,000 on a recurring monthly basis.
Adding to the mystery around Botanic Tonics is the fact that just two months before its first donation to MAHA PAC, the Department of Justice dropped a yearslong case against the company, citing resource concerns.
In a statement, a company spokesperson told MS NOW: “Botanic Tonics supports initiatives that advance consumer transparency and work to remove artificial ingredients and synthetic chemicals from the American food supply. That is the sole basis for our support.”
MAHA PAC doesn’t appear to have the war chest to be a kingmaker in Louisiana, let alone alter the midterms in favor of the GOP as Lyons promised.
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The group has spent about $950,000 of the $1 million it promised to boost Letlow, according to a person familiar with MAHA PAC’s operations. Nearly all of it went to text campaigns and mailers that focus on Trump’s endorsement of Letlow.
“We simply can’t trust anti-Trump Bill Cassidy in the U.S. Senate,” one mailer reviewed by MS NOW reads.
Meanwhile, a video advertisement calls Letlow “MAHA-approved” and notes that she would “stop the fraud, promote hospital price transparency, and lower prescription drug costs.”
Seemingly absent from MAHA PAC’s messaging to Louisianians are the issues most often associated with the MAHA movement, like the dangers of chemical additives in food and vaccine skepticism.
Lyons did not respond to multiple requests for comment from MS NOW.
Betting on Louisiana
Letlow isn’t the perfect MAHA candidate. She has been a proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine since her husband died from the virus in 2020, and a third candidate in the race, Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, has argued that he is the strongest MAHA candidate.
As far back as last year, Fleming criticized Cassidy for standing in the way of Kennedy’s MAHA agenda.
“Cassidy appears to be resistant to the reforms that RFK Jr. wants to bring,” Fleming told NOTUS last June.
But Lyons stands firmly behind Letlow.
“Letlow is clearly on Bobby Kennedy’s side,” he told Bannon earlier this month. “She’s been posting repeatedly over the last month, just day after day, pro-MAHA things, pro-MAHA on school lunches, on food dyes, on so many different things. She is right on board. She will vote with him. She will help with the MAHA movement.”
If Cassidy fails to make the run-off Saturday, Lyons said, it would “send a very strong message” — MAHA PAC is coming for the midterms.
“This will be the first blow,” he said. “And people will see it’s early on in the midterm races. And they will see that they’re going to have to start to pivot.
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.