Trump gets the complete domination he wanted in Louisiana

Fleming, a House Freedom caucus founder and former White House aide, ran as an unabashed Trump ally and spent the campaign arguing he represented MAGA’s ideological roots. He tried to cast Letlow as the establishment pick powered by elected officials rather than grassroots conservatives.

But Republican primary voters ultimately sided with the candidate carrying Trump’s seal of approval.

“Tonight’s runoff proves one indisputable fact: Donald Trump’s endorsement remains the apex predator of Republican politics,” said Louisiana GOP strategist Lionel Rainey. “Masterclass in raw electoral power.”

In one of the country’s reddest states, Letlow now enters the general as the overwhelming favorite to win in November. She’s up against Jamie Davis, a farmer, who won the Democratic runoff on Saturday.

Letlow’s likely ascent to the Senate marks a rapid rise in Louisiana politics: She won a special election to the House in 2021 to fill the seat of her husband, who died from Covid in 2020 just days before being sworn in. She jumped into the Senate race after Trump publicly endorsed her.

“President Trump, thank you for encouraging me to get into this race, thank you for your endorsement, Louisiana loves you,” Letlow said in her victory speech Saturday night.

Yet Trump’s endorsement of Letlow was not quite a knock-out punch. In the May primary, Cassidy, a top MAGA target, received less than 25 percent of the vote, and Letlow finished far ahead of the others — but she did not get enough to reach 50 percent support to avoid a runoff.

In the Saturday runoff, Letlow ran hard on Trump’s endorsement but Fleming also gained significant ground since his second-place finish in the first round of voting, and finished just 14 points behind Letlow, with nearly all the votes counted.

“Yes I love the heat of battle. I love the combat,” Fleming told supporters in his concession speech. “But it makes us stronger. It really makes us better.”

Letlow, who hails from north Louisiana, benefitted from outside national groups spending on her behalf, including the official political arm of the Make American Healthy Again movement, which pledged $1 million to boost her campaign.

Her victory is a sigh of relief for Landry, who invested tremendous political capital in getting her to the Senate, sometimes to a degree that frustrated fellow Republicans. Landry pressured donors to open their wallets for her campaign, and a super PAC aligned with the governor spent about $6 million on her behalf, mostly toward assailing Fleming with attacks about his stances on carbon capture and the border.

It’s unclear whether Landry will face a serious primary challenger when he’s up for reelection next year, but a Letlow loss would have made him more vulnerable to intraparty criticisms and skepticism about his political strength.

Some Louisiana Republicans immediately speculated that Fleming may now consider running against Landry. One Louisiana Republican, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about party dynamics, called it “payback.”

Landry, in a statement, congratulated Letlow “on her decisive victory,” and said the representative ran “an incredible race fueled by the support of President Donald J. Trump and hardworking Louisianians across our state.”

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