Sen. Bill Cassidy is reportedly furious with his own party's campaign arm for not spending enough to save his seat, and the response he got was a blunt reminder of why he's in trouble in the first place.
Punchbowl News reported Friday that the Louisiana Republican accused the National Republican Senatorial Committee of failing to sufficiently fund his reelection campaign during a phone call. NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper fired back with a profanity-laced response, telling Cassidy he should not have joined Democrats and six other GOP senators in voting to convict President Donald Trump following his second impeachment in January 2021.
The exchange, sourced to multiple anonymous individuals by Punchbowl, captures the central tension of a Senate race that has become one of the most closely watched primaries of the 2026 midterm cycle. Cassidy is running for a third term in a state Trump carried by 24 points in 2024. And he's doing it with the impeachment vote hanging around his neck like an anchor.
Cassidy faces two serious challengers in the May 16 GOP primary: Rep. Julia Letlow, who carries Trump's endorsement, and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, a 74-year-old former congressman and one of the nine co-founders of the House Freedom Caucus. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two advance to a June 27 runoff.
The polling picture is grim for the incumbent. A March survey by American Pulse Research & Polling placed Letlow at 31%, Fleming at 25%, and Cassidy at just 21%. A BDPC poll from the same month showed a similar order: Letlow 29%, Fleming 23%, Cassidy 19%. In both surveys, Cassidy would miss the runoff entirely.
A Fabrizio, Lee & Associates poll painted a slightly tighter picture, Letlow at 27%, Cassidy at 26%, Fleming at 19%, with 28% undecided. But even in that survey's hypothetical runoff, Letlow led Cassidy 46% to 34%, with a fifth of voters still undecided.
Only one poll showed Cassidy ahead. A March survey by Public Opinion Strategies, sponsored by Cassidy's own campaign, had the senator at 35%, Letlow at 24%, and Fleming at 21%. In a hypothetical runoff, Cassidy edged Letlow 45% to 43%.
As Breitbart reported, Cassidy's 2021 impeachment vote remains the defining liability with Republican primary voters, and the senator risks not even making the runoff despite spending heavily on his campaign.
Cassidy has not been short on cash. A press release from his office in January claimed the senator and groups supporting his reelection had assembled a combined war chest of $26 million. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who endorsed Cassidy, hosted a fundraiser in Baton Rouge in January that raised $652,000 for the campaign, the Washington Reporter first reported.
The NRSC itself has released video ads supporting Cassidy. And NRSC Chairman Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, endorsed the incumbent. Scott told reporters the committee would engage across the board in 2026 primaries.
Scott stated plainly:
"We're going to play in all of the races, all of our primaries."
But Scott also acknowledged that incumbent GOP senators face an uphill battle when Trump endorses against them. In March 2025, Axios reported that Scott said the NRSC would support incumbents even if they drew pro-Trump primary challengers, a stance now being tested in Louisiana.
The NRSC declined to comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation. A Cassidy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump endorsed Letlow, who won her House seat in a 2021 special election. Newsmax reported that the endorsement is part of a broader effort to remove Cassidy from the Senate, with a source telling Punchbowl that the White House "simply wants Cassidy out." The White House denied making any offer to Fleming to clear the field for Letlow.
But Letlow carries her own vulnerabilities. Before winning election to the House, she worked for the University of Louisiana at Monroe. A resurfaced 2020 video showed her vowing to establish a DEI office at the university. She also played a role pushing DEI workshops and "anti-racism" efforts there, a record that clashes sharply with the priorities of the GOP base she now courts.
Cassidy's campaign has worked to define Letlow on those terms. His aide Mark Harris said the race is far from settled:
"We're in the middle of a dogfight. 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."
Republican Louisiana state Rep. Mike Bayham, who has remained neutral in the primary, offered a similar assessment. He told Politico that the Trump endorsement has not locked the race down for Letlow, and that Cassidy's team moved quickly to frame the contest on their terms.
Bayham said:
"The Trump endorsement has not had a close-out move. Cassidy was ready for her. They defined her before she introduced herself."
Letlow's campaign told the Shreveport Times it did not commission the Fabrizio, Lee & Associates survey, though it uses that firm for polling, a distinction that raised questions about the survey's independence.
Cassidy is one of only three remaining GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021. The other two, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, face very different political terrain. Murkowski won reelection in 2022 despite Trump endorsing her opponent. Collins, the only Republican senator representing a state Kamala Harris won in 2024, is seeking reelection in November and is the presumptive GOP nominee.
Louisiana is a different animal. Trump's 24-point margin there in 2024 means the Republican primary winner is all but guaranteed to win the general election. The real contest is inside the party, and that is exactly where Cassidy's impeachment vote does the most damage.
The 2026 race marks the first Louisiana Senate election since the state switched back to traditional partisan primaries, abandoning the all-party "jungle primary" system it used from the 2010 through 2024 cycles. That change narrows the electorate to registered Republicans, a pool far less forgiving of a vote to convict a Republican president.
The political environment around Cassidy has been contentious for years. During his initial rise, outside groups battled fiercely over advertising in Louisiana, with the NRSC once threatening legal action against ads it called "patently false and misleading." Cassidy first won his seat in 2014 by defeating Mary Landrieu, the state's last Democratic senator.
Now the fight is coming from inside the house. And the party infrastructure that once helped Cassidy climb is offering only limited cover as he tries to survive.
The Louisiana race is a test case for a question that has defined Republican politics since 2021: what price does a GOP officeholder pay for breaking with Trump? The answer, in deep-red states, appears to be steep. Cassidy built a $26 million war chest, secured endorsements from the Senate majority leader and the NRSC chairman, and still finds himself trailing in most polls, all because of a single vote five years ago.
The broader impeachment battles that have consumed Washington since Trump's first term continue to shape primary elections across the country. In Louisiana, the consequences are arriving on schedule.
Fleming, for his part, splits the anti-Cassidy vote with Letlow. At 74, the former congressman and Freedom Caucus co-founder offers a MAGA-aligned alternative without the DEI baggage that Cassidy's team has used against Letlow. Whether that three-way dynamic helps or hurts the incumbent depends on how the undecided voters break before May 16.
The dynamics mirror other political collapses driven by party abandonment and voter backlash, a pattern that has claimed figures on both sides of the aisle in recent cycles.
DeCasper's reported response to Cassidy, that he should not have voted to convict, was not diplomatic. But it was honest. And in a closed Republican primary in a state Trump won by 24 points, honesty about the political math may be the one thing the NRSC got right.
When you vote to convict a president your own voters love, you don't get to complain that the cavalry is slow to arrive.