BATON ROUGE, Louisiana – US Representative Julia Letlow won the Republican nomination for US Senate in Louisiana on Saturday (June 25), giving President Donald Trump a win after he backed her to replace GOP Senator Bill Cassidy.
Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, defeated state Treasurer John Fleming in the two-candidate runoff after they finished ahead of Cassidy in the GOP primary May 16.
Letlow pledged her loyalty to Trump in a race where Cassidy, who voted to convict the president on impeachment charges in 2021, spent a year working to keep Trump from going after him. She has promised to work in lockstep with Trump to advance his agenda.
"I am so filled with gratitude for the greatest president this country has every had, Donald J. Trump," Letlow told supporters at her election night watch party in Baton Rouge. "I am also so incredibly grateful for your endorsement."
Letlow's victory caps Trump's early 2026 effort to back Republican challengers to GOP lawmakers who have disagreed with him and replace them with ones more loyal.
Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, Texas Senator John Cornyn and five Indiana state senators all lost reelection bids last month to GOP challengers he endorsed.
However Trump-backed candidates lost in two June GOP gubernatorial primaries: Representative Randy Feenstra on June 2 in Iowa, to businessperson Zach Lahn; and Lieutenant-Governor Burt Jones of Georgia on June 16, to billionaire Rick Jackson. Both winners were outsiders competing with establishment favorites.
Letlow is now the immediate favourite to succeed Cassidy in a state Trump carried in 2024 by 22 percentage points. Letlow would become Louisiana's first female Republican senator if elected.
Her supporters cheered as she stepped to the stage in Baton Rouge. One attendee let out a shriek a few minutes earlier after seeing on TV that The Associated Press had called the race.
Letlow has been in the House since 2021. Her husband, Luke Letlow, died from COVID-19 complications after being elected to Congress in 2020, and she won a special election to fill the seat.
It was Governor Jeff Landry, whom Letlow also thanked, who began advocating for her to Trump last year. The president took until January to endorse her, however, making his announcement before she declared her candidacy.
She finished first in last month's voting with nearly 45 per cent, compared with about 28 per cent for Fleming and nearly 25 per cent for Cassidy. Letlow and Fleming advanced to Saturday's runoff because nobody won a majority that day.
For some voters, Trump's endorsement was all that mattered.
"Trump's lady all the way," said Barbara Dufrene, 67, of Marrero. She added that she knew little about Letlow but was counting on the president to lower her healthcare costs and increase her social safety net. "I always vote whatever Trump wants."
Letlow's success on May 16, campaign spending on her behalf and support from prominent Republicans had her well positioned in the runoff. She was also endorsed by Landry and US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Fleming, a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus while in Congress, later worked in Trump's first administration. He reminded voters that he did not resign after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
On the campaign trail, he directed his appeals to those who identify most closely with the president's "Make America Great Again" movement, saying his voting record was more conservative than Letlow's. His ads described him as MAGA "long before it was cool."
Fleming told voters he was blocked from reaching Trump to seek his endorsement by White House allies of Landry. Fleming said he finally got on the phone with Trump and reminded the president who he was.
"I said nobody has been more loyal to you than me," Fleming recounted during a June campaign stop. "He said, 'You're fantastic! Why didn't you call?'"
The two campaigns spent comparably on advertising, roughly US$1 million (S$1.3 million) each, since the May 16 primary. But a super PAC that supports Letlow led all spending, accounting for US$4.1 million in the past six weeks, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Fleming ads highlighted Letlow's previous public support for diversity, equity and inclusion policy, which Trump has tried to eliminate.
Letlow, a former college administrator, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of the University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020, but said this year she opposes it.
Fleming reposted an AI-generated video on the social platform X this month that purported to show Letlow saying she supported DEI because she "didn't know any better." The fake image of Letlow also referenced her husband, who died from complications of Covid-19.
Fleming said he did not create the video "but it's getting passed around Louisiana for a reason."
Letlow condemned the sharing of the video as "disgraceful and indefensible," chiefly for its mention of her husband. She thanked her late husband Saturday and also introduced her fiance, Kevin Ainsworth, a Baton Rouge lobbyist. The pair were engaged at the White House in December.
Despite the rancour of the campaign, Letlow thanked Fleming and said they had a pleasant phone conversation after the race was called in her favour.
"The contest for this primary is over, and now it's on to the general election," Fleming told his supporters. "And we want to continue to make America strong by sending the best of the best there."
Letlow emphasised key priorities for social conservatives, notably her support for national legislation barring transgender women and girls from competing in school sports.
Fleming staked much of his campaign on opposition to carbon capture and sequestration, the process for injecting carbon dioxide waste underground to reduce industrial pollution.
The technology's build-out, included planned pipelines, has sparked backlash in rural Louisiana communities and divided the state GOP.
Fleming said such projects infringe on private property rights and federal government subsidies for the technology are wasteful.
In the Democratic primary, Jamie Davis, a northeast Louisiana crop farmer, defeated Gary Crockett, a Navy veteran and business executive. Both promoted addressing the cost of living and protecting social safety nets.
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