Trump-backed Letlow faces Fleming in Louisiana GOP Senate runoff

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for U.S. Senate in Louisiana is looking to clinch the GOP nomination Saturday and deliver another win for the president, who has sought to replace Republicans who cross him with hand-picked loyalists.

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, and state Treasurer John Fleming are competing in the runoff. The two finished ahead of Sen. Bill Cassidy in the May 16 primary after Trump denounced the two-term senator, who voted to convict him following his 2021 impeachment.

A Letlow victory would cap Trump’s primary efforts to unseat Republicans who have not been in lockstep with him. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Texas Sen. John Cornyn and five Indiana state senators all lost reelection bids last month to challengers he backed.

Letlow was elected to the House in 2021 after her husband, Luke Letlow, won the same seat but died before taking office. She received Trump’s backing before entering the primary race in January.

She finished first in the primary with nearly 45% of the vote, compared with about 28% for Fleming and nearly 25% for Cassidy.

“We have a chance to send a clear message that Louisiana stands with President Trump,” Letlow said Thursday in an online rally with the president. “He endorsed me because he knows I will stand with him.”

Letlow has big advantages

Letlow’s success on May 16, campaign spending on her behalf and support from prominent Republicans have her well positioned in the runoff. She was also endorsed by Gov. Jeff Landry, who consulted with Trump last year about her running for Senate, and U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Last month Letlow won in parishes from the state’s rural north to the New Orleans area in the southeast. She carried six of the 13 parishes that Fleming formerly represented in the U.S. House, including Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport.

Fleming, a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus while in Congress, later worked in Trump’s first administration. He has reminded voters that he did not resign after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

He has appealed to those who identify with the president’s “Make America Great Again” movement, saying his voting record is more conservative than Letlow’s. His campaign ads describe him as MAGA “long before it was cool.”

Fleming has told voters he was blocked from reaching Trump to seek his endorsement by White House allies of Landry. Fleming says 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?’”

Mary Patricia Wray, a Louisiana political consultant who advises Republican and Democratic candidates, said she expects Fleming to perform well in rural areas but Letlow has the upper hand.

“Higher-information voters in more populous areas are going to fall into that Letlow camp,” Wray said. “She is the more institutional-looking candidate.”

The two campaigns have spent comparably on advertising, roughly $1 million each. But a super PAC that supports Letlow has led all spending, accounting for $4 million since the primary, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Fleming attacked Letlow on DEI, and she criticized him over an AI video

Fleming has ads highlighting 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.

Letlow has emphasized 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.

Voters are also choosing a Democratic Senate nominee

In the Democratic primary, Jamie Davis, a northeast Louisiana crop farmer, faces Gary Crockett, a Navy veteran and business executive. Both have promoted addressing the cost of living and protecting social safety nets.

The state is heavily Republican. Trump carried Louisiana by 22 percentage points in 2024.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.