Louisiana’s 2026 Senate race has become more than a political contest. It’s a loyalty litmus test for the party in the age of President Trump’s second term. Senator Bill Cassidy, once considered a safe incumbent, is now navigating a political minefield shaped by closed primaries and a Republican base that worships loyalty and despises betrayal. In today’s GOP Louisiana, Cassidy isn’t merely a traitor for his impeachment vote—he’s a phony for pretending otherwise.
For years, Cassidy seemed secure. As a moderate-leaning physician with bipartisan credentials and a background in medicine, he was well-suited to Louisiana’s old jungle primary system. But that system—where the top two vote-getters proceed regardless of party—has been retired. A November 2024 amendment replaced it with closed party primaries, meaning only registered Republicans may vote in the GOP contest. That change hands the nomination directly to the party’s most conservative wing.
And that base is emphatically Trump’s base. In the 2024 presidential primary, Trump earned nearly 90% of GOP votes, and claimed over 60% in the general election—a clear mandate for MAGA ideology. Cassidy is now playing in their backyard, without crossover voters to buffer him.
The root of Cassidy’s trouble lies three years ago, in 2021, when he was one of only seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. On the Senate floor, Cassidy declared, “Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.” For that, the Louisiana GOP formally censured him as a traitor. Louisiana Trump supporters have not forgiven—or forgotten.
At the time, even Cassidy seemed to understand the political price he’d just paid. In interviews throughout 2021 and into 2022, he publicly floated the possibility of retiring. “I’m not committing either way,” he told reporters, later suggesting that he wanted to focus on policy rather than campaigning. Behind closed doors, Cassidy reportedly confided to colleagues that he had no intention of running again. For a while, it appeared he would leave public office as a man who cast a principled vote and moved on with his integrity intact.
Then the political winds shifted. Trump secured the 2024 nomination, and Cassidy quietly reversed course: endorsing Trump, aligning with “America First,” and voting to confirm controversial Trump nominees—including vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That pivot was less about conviction than survival. And to the MAGA faithful, Cassidy’s reversal reads not as genuine repentance but as political theater. They don’t just see a traitor—they see a phony.
Nowhere is that clearer than his vote to confirm RFK Jr., a man who has peddled some of the most dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies in American politics. Cassidy, a physician who has long championed evidence-based medicine and spoken against vaccine misinformation, voted for him anyway. It was a vote that screamed political self-preservation over principle. To many Republicans, it reeked of hypocrisy. He wasn’t just disloyal to Trump. Moreover, he was dishonest about who he really is; and, in today’s Republican Party, that combination is political poison.
Meanwhile, would-be replacements are lining up. John Fleming, Louisiana’s State Treasurer and a former Trump administration official, has formally entered the race and launched broadsides against Cassidy’s impeachment vote. State Senator Blake Miguez, a loud and proud Trump supporter, entered the race in June and wasted no time in framing Cassidy as weak, elitist, and disloyal. Even Rep. Julia Letlow, a conservative rising star, has reportedly been encouraged by Governor Jeff Landry to challenge Cassidy, with Trump himself taking an interest. Others—lesser-known candidates like Sammy Wyatt and Randall Arrington—have filed paperwork, and more could enter.
Cassidy is boxed in. Closed primaries mean only GOP primary voters—Trump’s most loyal disciples—will decide his fate. And they’re not interested in Cassidy’s late-game conversion. They’re not confused by his endorsements or votes. They remember January 2021. They remember the impeachment. And they remember who broke ranks when it mattered most.
If Cassidy somehow survives the primary, he enters the general deeply damaged, mistrusted by the base and likely abandoned by party elites. But if he loses—as many expect—to a MAGA loyalist like John Fleming or Blake Miguez, the path forward is clearer for Republicans. They’ll likely unite around Trump’s chosen candidate with the same loyalty that exiled Cassidy in the first place.
Still, that doesn’t mean a Democrat like John Bel Edwards has no path. In 2019, Edwards defeated a Trump-backed candidate in Eddie Rispone by peeling off independents and moderate Republicans wary of ideological hardliners. If GOP infighting becomes toxic or if the nominee overreaches, Edwards could repeat that strategy. It wouldn’t be easy—especially in a state that gave Trump over 60 percent of the vote—but with a well-known name and proven statewide appeal, he’d be the most viable Democratic contender in over a decade.
Ultimately, Cassidy’s crisis isn’t just about a vote cast in 2021. It’s about a fundamental mismatch between who he is and what the Republican Party has become. A party that once made room for doctors, technocrats, and institutionalists now demands something else entirely: absolute loyalty, total cultural alignment, and the kind of ruthless political instinct Cassidy has never possessed.
He knows it. His opponents know it. And now, Louisiana’s voters will decide whether there’s still room in the GOP for someone who once had the courage to say no, and then lacked the courage to stick to it.
In MAGA Louisiana, that’s not a campaign. It’s a confession. And the sentence is already being written.
