This Republican voted to convict Trump. Now he’s up for reelection. Can he survive?

BATON ROUGE, La. — Many of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January sixth revolt have retired. Not Sen. Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana — he’s working for reelection.

Cassidy’s bid for a 3rd time period will take a look at Trump’s grip on the celebration. The result may additionally present what voters need from their representatives in Washington on this political second — and whether or not a Republican senator like Cassidy can survive in Congress.

Cassidy is dealing with two major challengers on Saturday, together with one endorsed by Trump, pitting the veteran lawmaker who chairs the highly effective Senate well being committee in opposition to a millennial MAGA loyalist.

For a lot of Louisiana Republican voters, Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump felt like a betrayal.

Underneath the shade of a pop-up tailgate tent on the annual crawfish pageant in Breaux Bridge, retired deputy sheriff Kevin Dupree says he can be fantastic with any of the Republican nominees – besides Cassidy.

“I am the kind of particular person, if you happen to cross me, I most likely will not belief you anymore,” Dupree says. “I feel his political profession in Louisiana is completed.”

St. Martin Parish GOP Chair Kelby Daigle hopes that’s not so. Throughout the pageant, with a lineup that options Cajun music, a crawfish consuming contest and crawfish races, Daigle says has two polarizing positions proper now. He doesn’t like crawfish, and he’s backing Cassidy.

Daigle says Cassidy was proper to convict Trump, although he acknowledges that the senator has not all the time defined that vote properly to voters. Nonetheless he worries about what the president is doing to the celebration.

“Conservatism is about concepts and rules, and so they all the time make it about Trump,” Daigle says. “What are you going to do when he is not within the image?”

However for a lot of major voters, Trump remains to be very a lot within the image.

For some voters, Trump’s endorsement is paramount

“Trump does a lot for Louisiana, for this nation, and the one factor he requested the folks of Louisiana to do is vote for Congresswoman Julia Letlow, and I am going to try this for President Trump,” says Dustin Jacque Arnaud, a Republican activist in Lafayette Parish.

Letlow is Cassidy’s Trump-endorsed opponent. The opposite challenger is state treasurer John Fleming, a former member of Congress who served within the Trump administration, and has remained aggressive with Letlow and Cassidy within the polls. The highest two vote-getters will go to a runoff subsequent month if no candidate tops 50% of the vote.

A former school administrator, Letlow received a particular election in 2021 for the Home seat her late husband, Luke, was set to imagine earlier than he died from COVID in 2020.

“What I do learn about grief is that if yow will discover a method to stand up daily, get outdoors of your self and serve different folks, then therapeutic can begin to happen,” Letlow says. “And I had these two little infants and hastily I used to be the only real supplier, and so God simply opened up this door for me to run.”

In Congress, Letlow sponsored a invoice to gather oral histories from throughout the pandemic and has centered on training and kids. She launched the “Mother and father Invoice of Rights Act,” which might permit mother and father to evaluate classroom supplies like library books and require colleges to inform mother and father if their baby requests completely different pronouns, locker rooms or sports activities groups.

She additionally serves on the highly effective appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.

“After which I get a name from the massive man, and by that, I do not imply the lord — I imply President Trump himself,” Letlow stated at a marketing campaign meet and greet at a Lafayette sports activities bar. “And was requested to run for the Senate.”

Till now, Letlow has not confronted a critical political challenger. The Cassidy marketing campaign has spent thousands and thousands on marketing campaign advertisements attempting to label her as “Liberal Letlow,” citing her previous assist in academia for variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives. Letlow says she spent her time in Congress combating DEI.

Whilst Trump appears to construct up the following technology of MAGA warriors, Letlow doesn’t assault Cassidy by identify in her stump speech. She says Louisiana voters want a senator they’ll depend upon, not one keen to undermine Louisiana voters who overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

“If I realized something from Luke, you hearken to the folks you characterize and also you by no means flip your again,” she advised voters as they munched on sliders and wings.

“Now we have to have braveness”

Cassidy is attempting to persuade major voters that not solely did he not flip his again, however he has delivered for them in precisely the best way a senator ought to.

Throughout a marketing campaign cease with native officers in Denham Springs, he toured the quaint essential road, lined with vintage retailers.

A decade in the past, lots of them had been decimated by flooding. Cassidy says he remembers visiting not lengthy after the storm, as retailer homeowners piled particles and waterlogged stock on the road.

Cassidy helped steer federal cash to the restoration, and he says he continues to deliver residence billions of {dollars} for Louisiana, together with by means of his function negotiating the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation. He notes loads of his Republican colleagues opposed that measure, solely to assert credit score for the native initiatives it funded.

“I am a gastroenterologist,” Cassidy usually tells voters. “When the fecal materials was hitting the fan, they didn’t wish to be within the entrance row.”

When a lady requested Cassidy lately about his relationship with Trump, he says he advised her that whereas he doesn’t know whether or not the president likes him, they work collectively properly, noting Trump has signed a number of payments he wrote or negotiated in current months, together with measures to decrease the price of pharmaceuticals and crack down on fentanyl.

Cassidy subtly encourages voters to maneuver on from re-litigating the 2020 election fallout.

“In the event you’re in regards to the current and the long run, you are voting for Invoice Cassidy,” he says.

At a Baton Rouge rally overlooking the Mississippi River, the place the partitions are plastered with “Geaux Invoice” indicators spelled the Cajun manner, volunteers go out Cassidy stickers together with his pelican emblem. A flyer that features a picture of Cassidy and Trump smiling rests at each place setting.

On stage, Cassidy doesn’t point out his vote to convict the president. Whilst he presses his constituents to look ahead, he additionally appears to nod at his historical past of going his personal manner. “If we’re going to make our society, our state, a greater place, we’ve to have braveness,” he says. “And if we do not, we lose.”

Cassidy supporter Leslie Davis has been attempting to persuade skeptical associates and neighbors to again the senator. She introduced one in all them to the rally, however the effort has not been straightforward.

“The very factor they wish to criticize a politician for, they’re buying and selling off their values to go together with the group,” she says. “I am not a crowd particular person. If I am a mum or dad, I’ve to make some exhausting selections that different individuals are not going to grasp. However you do what you consider is correct.”

Cassidy says he’s at peace together with his selections.

“Making a decision primarily based on the info earlier than you,” he advised reporters after the rally. “And you then dwell with that call. I realized that as a doctor. That is how I dwell my life.”

Cassidy can be attempting to courtroom Democrats who see his unbiased streak as an asset, not treachery. New Orleans voter Eli Feinstein has been a Democrat since he turned 18, however he modified his registration to no celebration this yr to vote for Cassidy within the GOP major and has tried to persuade others to do the identical.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to have the traditionally open major closed, stopping registered Democrats who could also be keen to again Cassidy from requesting a Republican major poll. Cassidy has instantly appealed to Democrats to vary their celebration registrations to assist increase him.

Feinstein says come November, he’ll vote for the Democratic nominee. However in a state as crimson as beans and rice all however assured to elect a Republican, he says Cassidy is the best choice.

“He is somebody who doesn’t share my politics,” Feinstein says. “And I want that America had extra folks like him.”

Cassidy is squeezed in a vise

Many Democrats don’t see Cassidy that manner. The longtime doctor, for years labored within the charity hospital system and co-founded a clinic for low-income sufferers, offered the essential vote to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to guide Well being and Human Providers, regardless of deep reservations about Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.

And Cassidy’s overtures to Trump voters might fall flat as properly. Voter Debbie Spinks says Cassidy’s assist of the Save America Act, a invoice Trump has pushed to focus on election fraud, doesn’t really feel real.

“Solely as a result of it is election time,” she says. “Election time they’re all in regards to the folks. They win, they do not know you.”

Former Republican Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne says Cassidy is squeezed in a vice.

“He is received a push from either side — those that need unqualified fealty to Trump on one aspect and those that need any person to face as much as Trump on the opposite aspect,” Dardenne says at a Louisiana State College baseball recreation, the place Cassidy occurs to be campaigning a couple of sections over.

“Invoice is attempting to be each issues and it could wind up costing him,” he says.

That might additionally imply the Senate has one fewer Republican open to sometimes breaking with Trump at a time when Congress has been greater than keen to defer to the president. These members have additionally tended to be among the many lawmakers extra prone to collaborate throughout the aisle on laws.

4 of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021 didn’t search reelection. One of many seven, Susan Collins of Maine, is dealing with reelection this yr, although she didn’t draw a major problem and is working in a state Vice President Kamala Harris carried in 2024.

The opposite remaining senator from that group is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She managed to win reelection in 2022, although Alaska has a novel nonpartisan major system, the place the highest 4 vote getters of any celebration advance, that helped her survive regardless of censures from her celebration. Nonetheless Murkowski is the one Republican senator who has been in related sneakers as Cassidy and managed to come back out the opposite aspect.

“I’ve simply advised him, ‘Keep sturdy my good friend, you might be doing all the correct issues for all the proper causes,” Murkowski stated in an interview. “I feel it is exhausting to say that the leads to a race in a single state are emblematic of what’s occurring within the nation, however it’s plain that the endorsement of President Trump carries vital weight.”

Dardenne additionally cautions in opposition to inferring an excessive amount of from what occurs in a state with no ethnic majority. Louisiana is about 40% white Protestant and 32% Black.

“Twenty eight % are all the pieces else: French, Spanish, Creole, Catholics,” he says. “That has made our politics, our historical past, completely not like any state in America, so we’re not a bellwether, essentially.”

Nonetheless, Dardenne says most voters are both fish or fowl — they love Trump or hate him. However lawyer Will Coenen is neither, the uncommon type of voter Cassidy wants to achieve.

In between innings, Coenen says he has supported Trump, however worries “tremendously” in regards to the struggle in Iran. Nonetheless, Coenen is skeptical of Cassidy and suspects he’ll do something to catch a vote in election season, although the vote to convict Trump shouldn’t be the dealbreaker for him.

“I care about what they plan to do for Louisiana,” Coenen says. “That is most likely probably the most complicated time in politics I’ve ever skilled. It is a troublesome time for voters. I imply who do you belief?”

Cassidy is asking voters to belief him. This election will take a look at not solely that proposition, but additionally Trump’s maintain on the celebration and if an endangered breed of Republican like Cassidy nonetheless has a spot within the Senate.