Is Bill Cassidy boiled shrimp? ⚜️🦐♨️
Rep. Julia Letlow's primary challenge could oust the Louisiana senator and add Cassidy to the pile of discarded Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2021
🍺 What’s on tap 🚰
Today’s newsletter features:
Opening Bell: Must-read items about elections and politics.
The Frontrunner: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana faces a difficult primary challenge from Rep. Julia Letlow. The past primary performances of Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment in 2021 bode poorly for Cassidy.
Blake Burman on Prediction Markets: Blake Burman, Chief Washington Correspondent for NewsNation, runs a Substack where he tracks political prediction markets. This week, he looks at the markets regarding the possibility of a government shutdown, the identity of the next Federal Reserve chair, and who the Democrats and Republicans will nominate in Texas’s U.S. Senate race.
Around the Corner: Upcoming elections we’re tracking at DDHQ.
🔔 Opening Bell 🐏
Must-read items about elections and politics.
In the wake of a Minneapolis shooting death involving ICE officers, Senate Democrats have called for a government funding package to exclude funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Should the Senate fail to act on the legislation by the end of the week, a government shutdown will ensue.
New York has entered the 2026 redistricting chat. Last week, a New York state judge ruled that New York’s 11th Congressional District was drawn in an unconstitutional manner because it dilutes Black and Latino voting power. While the decision will be appealed, it opens the door to a potential redraw of the 11th District, which contains Staten Island and part of southern Brooklyn. Held by Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, it is the only GOP-controlled seat in New York City. However, redistricting could make it winnable for Democrats in November.
Please subscribe to our Polling Memo! The weekly writeup, which now comes out on Tuesdays, features key trends based on DDHQ’s polling averages. If you’re already a subscriber to The Bellwether, you can receive the memo in your inbox by clicking on your account settings and opt to receive the Poll Memo (see the image below).
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📈 The Frontrunner 🥇
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy is in big trouble down on the Bayou
Quick summary:
President Trump endorsed Republican Rep. Julia Letlow in Louisiana’s 2026 U.S. Senate race. Letlow’s candidacy could doom the reelection chances of incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in the president’s 2021 impeachment trial.
Cassidy must win a majority of the GOP primary vote to win renomination. But pro-impeachment Republicans have won a majority in just two of nine primary elections across 2022 and 2024. Cassidy also faces the difficult task of running in a partisan primary. The three pro-impeachment Republicans who have run in party primaries all lost renomination.
Cassidy’s potential defeat could play a part in reducing the remaining Republicans in Congress who backed Trump’s impeachment to just one — Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Cassidy and the other pro-impeachment Republicans who are up in 2026 all face difficult electoral circumstances or have retired.
Go to a seafood boil in Louisiana and you’ll see pounds of shrimp cooking in a huge pot with many other delectable ingredients. Yet despite his affinity for Bayou-based fare, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has probably lost his appetite after President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow in Louisiana’s 2026 Senate race. By backing Letlow over Cassidy in the state’s GOP primary, Trump aims to boil the incumbent’s political career, much as he has other Republicans who supported impeaching him at the conclusion of the president’s first term.
Trump’s endorsement of Letlow came despite Cassidy’s efforts to get back into Trump’s good graces after he voted to convict in Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial. Most notably, Cassidy decided to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Cassidy, a physician who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, had deep misgivings about Kennedy’s views, especially his vaccine skepticism, but opted to vote in favor of Kennedy’s nomination in committee and on the Senate floor.
To win the GOP nomination — a near-guarantee of election in dark red Louisiana — Cassidy must win a majority of the primary vote, which few pro-impeachment Republicans have done. While Cassidy holds a decent approval rating among Republicans, his standing is worse than that of Trump or other high-profile GOP officeholders. Losing GOP support would doom Cassidy because Louisiana has implemented partly-closed primaries for federal elections, meaning that only Republicans and unaffiliated voters can vote in the GOP primary.
For Cassidy, the most likely outcome is defeat, which would add him to the list of ousted pro-impeachment Republican members of Congress. In turn, it’s possible that just one of the 17 Republicans across both the Senate and House who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 might still be in Congress come 2027.
Where Cassidy stands with Louisiana Republicans
Until Trump blasted out a social media message supporting Letlow on Jan. 17, Cassidy had reason to be at least cautiously optimistic about his reelection chances. In late November, he told Punchbowl News that the White House had communicated to him that “the president’s staying neutral” in the GOP primary. Considering Cassidy’s impeachment vote in 2021, which prompted the Louisiana GOP to censure the senator, a neutral Trump was probably the best-case scenario for Cassidy.
Importantly, the incumbent also lacked a top-tier primary opponent who could rally conservative opposition to Cassidy. Letlow was reportedly considering a run, but with the Feb. 13 candidate filing deadline less than a month away, her lack of movement probably gave Cassidy hope that she would not run. As it stood, Cassidy’s main opposition looked to be the mostly self-funded campaign of state Treasurer John Fleming. The very conservative Fleming could potentially defeat Cassidy — an October poll for Fleming’s campaign found him running just ahead of Cassidy, 25%-23% — but the challenger trailed Cassidy in fundraising.
Moreover, Republican attitudes toward Cassidy had recovered a fair bit since he backed Trump’s impeachment in 2021. Morning Consult found Cassidy had a 66% approval rating among Louisiana Republicans in the third quarter of 2025 (the firm’s most recent data), far higher than where he stood throughout much of 2021 and 2022. During that period, he largely hovered around 50% approval in Morning Consult’s polling.
This largely represented a return to Cassidy’s pre-impeachment standing. For instance, in the first quarter of 2019, Morning Consult found Cassidy had a 69% approval rating among Louisiana Republicans. The share of Republicans who said they strongly approved of Cassidy also ticked up, going from the low teens in 2021-22 to as high as 28% early in 2025 (though that figure receded to 20% by the third quarter of last year).
Despite their improvement, Cassidy’s numbers among Republicans stood notably lower than those of Trump, other high-profile Louisiana GOP officeholders, and most Republican senators. In Morning Consult’s polling during the same period, Trump’s approval rating was about 90% among Louisiana Republicans. Sen. John Kennedy, Cassidy’s counterpart, held an 82% approval rating, while Gov. Jeff Landry came in at 76%. Among all GOP senators, only four had markedly worse ratings among Republicans in their states: Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (41%), Susan Collins of Maine (48%), Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (52%), and Thom Tillis of North Carolina (56%) — not exactly a who’s who of GOP politicians beloved by conservatives.
Cassidy’s majority problem
Letlow’s candidacy, accompanied by Trump’s endorsement, provides an alternative around which to coalesce when it comes to Cassidy’s GOP opponents and those who hold lukewarm views toward the incumbent. Letlow’s announcement video emphasized her support for Trump and, in a clear shot at Cassidy’s record, stressed that “we shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote” in a state as conservative as Louisiana.
Beyond her own fundraising, Letlow will likely benefit from the largesse of MAGA-associated super PACs to get this message out to voters. Even though he has the nominal support of Republican leaders in D.C., Cassidy cannot count on outside help from big-spending outfits like the Senate Leadership Fund, which will focus on races that could be competitive in November — definitely not the case in Louisiana.
All of this adds to a challenge Cassidy faced even before Letlow’s entry: He must garner a majority in the primary to win renomination. And, in a new twist, the voters in the primary will mostly be registered Republicans, although unaffiliated voters can participate as well. For much of the past 50 years, Louisiana employed a “jungle primary” whereby all voters regardless of party registration voted for the same set of candidates from all parties. If one candidate garnered a majority, that candidate won; if no one claimed a majority, a runoff would occur. But in 2024, Louisiana’s GOP-led state government established partisan primaries for select offices, including the U.S. Senate and House, with a majority required to avoid a primary runoff.
We have yet to see public polling testing Cassidy against Letlow, but the electoral history of pro-impeachment Republicans bodes poorly for the incumbent. In 2022 and 2024, in just two of nine elections did a Republican who backed Trump’s impeachment in 2021 win a majority among Republican primary voters or, in states that do not use partisan primaries, voters who cast a vote for a Republican candidate. Although five still advanced to the general election, all of them hailed from a state with a top-two or top-four primary system, which both permit all voters regardless of party affiliation to participate. On the other hand, all three who ran in partisan primaries lost, as did one other who ran in a top-two system.
The 2022 cycle saw four House members lose renomination after voting for impeachment in 2021. The most high-profile loser was Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who formerly held a leadership position in the House Republican Conference but lost badly to now-Rep. Harriet Hageman. By comparison, Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer only narrowly lost in a head-to-head race. Meanwhile, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler finished third in her top-two primary, leaving her out of the general election.
Last and least, in terms of support, was South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice, who only earned about 25% in his defeat against now-Rep. Russell Fry. Of these nine cases, Rice is the only pro-impeachment Republican to seek reelection in a state that requires a majority in a primary and to come from the South, a more conservative and pro-Trump region of the country. Cassidy, of course, also has to run under similar conditions, which is not a great sign for him.
The success stories all come from states that do not use partisan primaries. The most successful is undoubtedly California Rep. David Valadao. He won about 47% of the votes cast for the three GOP candidates in his 2022 race, enough to finish second in the top-two primary and advance to the general election, which he won. Valadao then more easily advanced in 2024 and again won reelection. Contrastingly, Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse won reelection in 2022 and 2024 while winning fewer than 35% of the votes cast for GOP candidates in his top-two races. In 2022, he advanced out of a crowded field along with a Democrat, whom he easily beat in November in his red seat; in 2024, he finished second in the primary to Jerrod Sessler, a Trump-endorsed Republican, but managed to defeat Sessler in November.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the only pro-impeachment Republican besides Valadao to earn a majority of GOP votes. However, while she won 51% of votes cast in 2022 in Alaska’s top-four primary for GOP candidates, Murkowski almost certainly did not win a majority among registered Republicans. In that race, Murkowski and Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka finished first and second. But polls found Tshibaka was far more popular than Murkowski among Republicans, while Murkowski attracted substantial support from Democrats and independents, who could participate in the top-four system established in 2020. A 2024 study confirmed that Murkowski likely would have lost a closed partisan primary. In fact, she did exactly that in 2010, losing the GOP nomination to Joe Miller under Alaska’s old partisan primary rules, before she won reelection as a write-in candidate in November.
A species on the verge of extinction
In the larger 2026 election picture, Cassidy’s potential defeat could play a part in reducing the remaining Republicans in Congress who backed Trump’s impeachment to just one. In 2021, 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump, while seven Senate Republicans voted to convict him. Of those 17, just five remain in Congress: Cassidy, Collins, and Murkowski in the Senate, and Newhouse and Valadao in the House. All but Murkowski are up for reelection this year, and Newhouse announced his retirement in December, so losses by Cassidy, Collins, and Valadao would leave Murkowski all alone.
While Cassidy’s primary election will decide his future, the November 2026 general election will most likely decide the fate of Collins and Valadao. Collins has not formally announced her reelection bid, but she is expected to run for a sixth term. However, Collins is the only GOP senator up in 2026 who hails from a state that Trump lost in 2024, which has made her a top target for Democrats. Meanwhile, Valadao is seeking reelection in a competitive seat made more so by California’s redistricting proposition last November (Trump would have carried it by about 2 points in 2024). California Democrats included Valadao’s seat as one of the five they have targeted for capture in November.
The dwindling number of Republicans who backed impeachment is just another sign of Trump’s preeminent influence over his party. Faced with anger from Trump and the party base over their votes — as well as new district lines after the 2020 census — many pro-impeachment members did not seek reelection in 2022. Many who did run again lost their primary races because they had crossed Trump. Two more — Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska (resigned) and Mitt Romney of Utah (retired) — left office in the 2024 election cycle rather than continue butting heads with the party’s MAGA wing.
Now in 2026, Cassidy’s primary race against Letlow will once again test Trump’s dominance in GOP politics. The incumbent is going to have a tough uphill battle.
🟢 No Red Or Blue, Just Green 📗
Blake Burman on prediction markets:
🏦 Shutdown Next?
One of the prominent political battles of 2025 was the record government shutdown, which lasted 43 days. The fight involved expiring Obamacare subsidies and by the time the shutdown ended there still wasn’t any sort of long term fix. One result was the next funding deadline was punted to January 30, 2026. Well, here we are, and now there is a completely different set of circumstances around a potential shutdown:
First off, let me say this: I’m not going to weigh in here on the latest ICE involved shooting death in Minnesota. The video is all over the internet, and you can judge for yourself how you feel.
With that said… Senate Democrats are now saying they aren’t going to provide votes to fund DHS (ICE is a part of DHS). The House of Representatives last week passed several spending bills, including DHS funding, and sent it over to the Senate. The bills account for roughly $1.2 trillion in spending. That’s why you see the prediction markets at a roughly 8-in-10 shot of a shutdown.
Here’s a couple things to keep in mind: the Senate is not in session Monday due to this storm, and any changes that Senate Democrats might want to force upon DHS/ICE in exchange for their support would mean that the bill would then be sent back to the House. Tick tock.
You can read the rest of Blake’s post on his Substack!
📆 Around the Corner 📌
Notable upcoming elections:
January 31, 2026
TX-18 Special Election Runoff
February 5, 2026
NJ-11 Special Election Primary
March 10, 2026
GA-14 Special Election (runoff likely)
April 7, 2026
Wisconsin Supreme Court General Election
GA-14 Special Election Runoff (if necessary)
April 16, 2026
NJ-11 Special Election
Check out our 2026 Primary Primer for more information about the regular primaries happening in 2026!