Cassidy made desperate after Senate race shakeup

Just like that, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy now is odds-on to miss the party preference primary nomination for his office and may lead him to consider doing the previously unthinkable.

Which isn’t to drop out. Up to this week, Cassidy increasingly had buffeted storms in his quest for reelection later this year as GOP quality challenger after quality challenger entered the contest. Up until the middle of last month, the multiplicity of such challengers had put him in a position with his projected support so eroded that he would have to endure a runoff for the nod which he seemed likely to lose, but regardless was the most likely to survive to it.

Then Republican Rep. Julia Letlow made a surprising entrance into the race after GOP Pres. Donald Trump endorsed her out of the blue. That by itself began to threaten Cassidy’s place in the runoff, as Letlow would take more votes from him that the other more-conservative competitors, all the more particularly since Cassidy had made an enemy of Trump by voting to convict him of half-baked impeachment charges between Trump’s terms.

But then the knock-on effects began. First, Republican state Rep. Julie Emerson dropped out and then, in a move as surprising as Letlow’s entrance, GOP state Sen. Blake Miguez exited in favor of trying to snare Letlow’s seat. With Republican Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta lagging badly in fundraising, suddenly GOP Treas. John Fleming now has a clear path among the consistent conservatives to make it to the runoff.

Of those conservatives, Fleming always had the best chance, because he could self-fund deeply a campaign, had statewide name recognition from his lopsided treasurer win in 2023, and was the only of the four quality consistent conservatives to have served in Congress before and compiled policy credentials there none other could match. It also didn’t hurt that he had served in a senior position in the White House during Trump’s first term. He entered first, he kept hammering away despite criticism that he hadn’t performed well in his initial 2016 Senate run (although that was decided in a blanket primary) and that Trump had refused to endorse him, and now looks to have emerged as the solid conservative alternative to Cassidy

Yet by not snagging Trump’s endorsement this now makes for an interesting three-way race for the nomination as qualifying for the primary election (and general election, if not running as a Republican or Democrat) commences next week. In essence, Cassidy continues in the moderate/insider lane, Fleming has captured the solid conservative lane, and Letlow is trying to occupy part of both.

That means any two of the three could make the runoff, but polling by various candidacies and organizations point to the most likely pair being Letlow and Fleming. It begs the question of whether Cassidy will stay in the race – this particular nomination contest, that is.

Miguez’s bailing out now kicks the prop out from securing a runoff place for Cassidy because that vote largely will go to Fleming who threatens to push past Cassidy for the runoff, and Letlow picks up most of the rest (unless Skrmetta can kickstart his campaign into credible action). Even with his chances not good in a runoff, the rule of thumb is to put yourself in the position to fight the longest because you never know what will happen, and now Cassidy faces ejection over a month prior to what would have been the earliest expiration date of his campaign.

So, one way to lengthen that all the way to November is run as an independent, which has worked several times in recent years for senators who saw themselves as frozen out of their major party’s nomination. The problem with that is to qualify as that an extensive petitioning process must occur, the deadline for which already has passed.

The other option is to run as a Democrat. It’s actually not incredibly far-fetched, as in his youth Cassidy was a Democrat and publicly promoted less-than-conservative issue preferences, but it would be a turnaround hard for many in the GOP to swallow and Democrats may regard it as askance as partisan convenience with enough skepticism to reject him in any event. Still, if imploring independents to hit that party’s primary to vote for him, he likely wins it.

Problem is, in the general election too few Republican voters could stomach this ultimate of flipflops so probably the likes of Letlow or Fleming still beat him, rather than in the runoff. And, this would create chaos for the GOP majority in the Senate whose backers and members instantly would cut off support for him, as well as his hometown supporters jettisoning him as well. The fact is, he has to dance with the ones who brought him.

Cassidy has spent millions and has millions more to spend, so he seems unlikely to vacate the race with nothing to lose by staying in. However, by the numbers he’s on the way out, and desperate men do desperate things.