Republican Louisiana senator in tough primary after Trump backs opponent

The power of Donald Trump ’s endorsement will be put to its latest test on Saturday, when Louisiana holds primary elections in which the US senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to impeach the president following the January 6 insurrection, then tried to make amends by casting the pivotal vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary, stands a chance of losing his party’s nomination. An incumbent Republican running for a third term representing a deeply Republican state, Cassidy would normally be a shoo-in for re-election. But in January, Trump abruptly said that the US representative Julia Letlow should run against Cassidy and offered his endorsement, underscoring his continued willingness to seek revenge against anyone in the Republican party who has crossed him. The president’s campaign to oust a senator of his own party – the sort of thing that was unheard of in previous administrations, but not under Trump – may have achieved the desired effect. Letlow promptly jumped into the Republican Senate primary, as did state treasurer and former representative John Fleming. An Emerson College poll released last month showed Cassidy in third place among likely Republican voters, with Fleming and Letlow neck and neck for the lead. “This is a primary that is mostly about Trump,” said Robert Hogan, a Louisiana State University political science professor, adding that the president’s spurning of Cassidy was probably the “death knell” for his time in the Senate. …