SouthernWorldwide.com – The significant influence of President Donald Trump on the Republican Party and the effectiveness of his endorsements in Republican nomination contests are facing their latest challenge on Saturday, with Louisiana holding primary runoff elections for the U.S. Senate.
Six weeks after Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican targeted by Trump, failed to secure a third six-year term, Republican voters in the reliably red Gulf Coast state will choose between Representative Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming for the open Senate seat.
A victory for Letlow in the GOP runoff would represent another win for Trump as he aims to fill Congress with loyal lawmakers during his final two years in the White House. However, a win for Fleming would mark the third high-profile endorsement setback for Trump in this spring’s Republican primaries.
Cassidy was defeated five years after he voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Letlow, who received Trump’s backing even before entering the race in January, secured 45% of the vote in the primary. Fleming garnered approximately 28%, and Cassidy received just under 25%. As no candidate achieved over 50% of the vote, Letlow and Fleming advanced to the runoff for the Republican nomination. Cassidy became the first elected Republican senator to lose renomination since Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana in 2012.
Trump, celebrating Cassidy’s defeat, stated on social media, “it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!”
In his concession speech to supporters, Cassidy commented on Trump, saying, “When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout, you don’t whine. You don’t claim the election was stolen… You don’t manufacture some excuse.”
Letlow, who is also endorsed by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a prominent Trump ally, won her congressional seat in 2021. This followed the death of her husband, Luke Letlow, just six days after he was sworn into the U.S. House after his 2020 election victory for the seat she now holds. She has consistently highlighted Trump’s support throughout her Senate campaign.
Fleming, who previously served eight years in Congress and later as a White House deputy chief of staff during Trump’s first term, has asserted that he is the most conservative candidate in the GOP Senate primary.
The Republican nominee is expected to be the clear frontrunner in the midterm election against either farmer Jamie Davis or Navy veteran Gary Crockett, who are competing in the Democratic Senate runoff.
The potent impact of the president’s endorsement power has been evident in GOP primaries over the past two months. His favored candidates have successfully unseated incumbents he targeted in contests in Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas, as well as in the Louisiana primary.
However, Trump’s streak of endorsements in statewide and congressional Republican primaries was broken a few weeks ago. His last-minute endorsement of Republican Representative Randy Feenstra of Iowa in the race to succeed retiring GOP Governor Kim Reynolds was not enough to secure victory for the three-term congressman.
Feenstra was narrowly defeated by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer, and former political strategist. Lahn was backed by the political factions of MAHA, an acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Turning Point USA, the influential conservative organization co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
The president regained momentum three weeks ago in South Carolina. Trump-backed Lieutenant Governor Pam Evette finished first in the GOP gubernatorial primary, and longtime Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham secured a majority of the vote in the Republican Senate primary, thus avoiding a runoff.
Graham, who was endorsed by Trump, faced primary challenges from five candidates. Among them was conservative businessman Mark Lynch, who criticized the senator for his support of the war in Iran. Lynch received backing from some MAGA leaders who have been critical of the president.
Two weeks prior, Trump-backed candidates emerged victorious in two out of the three top races in Georgia and Alabama. The sole setback occurred against a billionaire businessman who invested over $100 million of his personal funds to promote his campaign.
Representative Barry Moore, a member of the House Freedom Caucus and a staunch Trump supporter who received the president’s endorsement, comfortably defeated his rival Jared Hudson. Hudson, a former Navy SEAL sniper, was supported by several prominent conservative figures in Alabama’s solidly Republican GOP Senate runoff.
In the closely contested Georgia Republican Senate runoff, an eleventh-hour endorsement from Trump helped propel Representative Mike Collins, a MAGA advocate, to victory over former college football coach Derek Dooley. Dooley was backed by popular conservative Governor Brian Kemp.
Collins will now face Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in the general election. This race is among a handful that will likely determine whether the GOP retains its narrow majority in the chamber during the midterms.
However, in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial runoff, the candidate Trump endorsed, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who also received an endorsement from Kemp the previous weekend, was defeated by billionaire businessman Rick Jackson, who ran on an outsider platform.
On Tuesday, first-time candidate Anthony Constantino, a businessman and former boxer, who was backed by Trump, defeated Robert Smullen. Smullen, a retired Marine Corps colonel and New York assemblyman, had the support of the state party in the upstate New York race to succeed retiring GOP Representative Elise Stefanik.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial runoff, Trump was guaranteed a win.
This was because, in addition to backing Evette, he also provided a last-minute endorsement to State Attorney General Alan Wilson, who went on to win the contest in a landslide.
