A GOP senator who voted to convict President Donald Trump accused the Republican establishment of not pouring enough money into his already cash-rich reelection campaign, Punchbowl News reported Friday.
Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy is set to face voters for the first time since his vote following Trump’s second impeachment, as he competes against Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming in a brutal May 16 GOP primary. Despite spending millions of dollars in his bid for a third term, Cassidy lashed out at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in a phone call, accusing the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm of not sufficiently funding his campaign, according to Punchbowl News.
NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper gave a profanity-laced response to the embattled senator, stating that he should not have joined Democrats and six other GOP senators in convicting Trump in January 2021, the outlet reported, citing multiple anonymous sources.
The committee has released video ads supporting Cassidy. Its chairman, Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, endorsed his campaign along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. A fundraiser hosted by Thune in January raised $652,000 for Cassidy’s campaign, the Washington Reporter first reported. The senator and groups supporting his reelection had a combined war chest of $26 million in January, according to a press release from his office at the time.
A Cassidy spokesperson did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The NRSC declined to comment on the topic.
Scott has said that the NRSC will support incumbent GOP Senators during the 2026 midterm cycle even if they receive a pro-Trump primary opponent, Axios reported in March 2025. He also acknowledged to the outlet that despite this, incumbent GOP senators face an uphill battle if Trump endorses against them.
Scott told Axios, “We’re going to play in all of the races — all of our primaries,” when asked at the time if the NRSC would support Cassidy.
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the May primary, a runoff election will be held between the top two vote-getters on June 27. The 2026 Senate election is the first in the state since it switched back to conducting traditional partisan primaries as opposed to the all-party “jungle primary” system it used from the 2010 to 2024 election cycles.
“The trajectory of this race is clear. Bill Cassidy is collapsing under the weight of his anti-Trump record, while Julia Letlow is building an insurmountable lead thanks to President Trump’s complete and total endorsement,” a Letlow campaign spokesperson told the DCNF in a statement.
The spokesperson pointed to a March survey by American Pulse Research & Polling that showed Letlow at 31%, Fleming at 25% and Cassidy at 21%, — a result that would see the incumbent missing the runoff election altogether. The same poll had the Trump-endorsed Letlow narrowly edging out Fleming in a runoff 37% to 34%.
Furthermore, the Letlow spokesperson also pointed to a BDPC poll from the same month that showed Letlow at 29%, Fleming at 23% and Cassidy missing the runoff with 19%. The same poll also showed Letlow narrowly prevailing over Fleming in the runoff.
A Fabrizio, Lee & Associates poll of likely Republican primary voters conducted in March showed Letlow leading Cassidy by a razor-thin margin: the Trump-backed challenger had 27% of support, the incumbent had 26%, Fleming had 19%, and 28% of voters were undecided. The poll showed that in a hypothetical runoff election between Letlow and Cassidy, Letlow polled 46% of the vote to Cassidy’s 34%, with the remaining 20% of voters undecided.
Letlow’s campaign told the Shreveport Times that it did not commission the survey, although it uses the firm that conducted it for polling.
However, a Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted the same month and sponsored by Cassidy’s campaign had the senator on top with 35%, Letlow at 24% and Fleming at 21%. It also showed Cassidy narrowly surviving his primary challenge polling 45% in a hypothetical runoff compared to Letlow’s 43%.
Some Louisiana Republicans observed that Letlow has largely failed to emerge as the race’s clear frontrunner, despite holding a coveted endorsement by the country’s sitting president.
“The Trump endorsement has not had a close-out move. Cassidy was ready for her,” Republican Louisiana State Rep. Mike Bayham, who has remained neutral during the primary, told Politico on Friday. “They defined her before she introduced herself.”
Before winning election to the House in a 2021 special election, Letlow worked for the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) where she played a role pushing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) workshops and “anti-racism” efforts, the DCNF first reported in January. A resurfaced 2020 video showed Letlow, who now publicly opposes “woke ideology,” vowing to establish a DEI office at the university.
“We’re in the middle of a dogfight,” Cassidy aide Mark Harris told Politico. “Everyone’s expectation is that she would shoot to a large lead and that we’d all be running from behind. But frankly I think they just weren’t ready for this race.”
Fleming, the third major GOP candidate in the race, is a 74-year-old former congressman who was one of the nine co-founders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
Since Louisiana is a deep red state that Trump carried by 24 points in the 2024 presidential election, the winner of the GOP primary is all but guaranteed to win the November general election. The state’s last Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, lost reelection to Cassidy in 2014.
Along with Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Cassidy is one of three remaining GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021. Murkowski won reelection in 2022 despite Trump endorsing her opponent. Collins, currently the only Republican senator representing a state Kamala Harris won in 2024, is seeking reelection in November where she is the presumptive GOP nominee.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
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