Hy and Christopher broadcast from Big Bend National Park. We ask why Trump has put his face on the new annual pass for the National Parks? We also examine Trump’s recent endorsement of Julia Letlow. Here is Christopher’s column in The Louisiana Weekly.
GOP contenders unfazed by Trump endorsement of Julia Letlow
By Christopher Tidmore, Contributing Writer
Three weeks ago, in a closed meeting of the Republican National Committee, Chairman Joe Gruters reportedly said that he had learned that Senator Bill Cassidy would be accepting a university position instead of qualifying for another term, and that Congresswoman Julia Letlow would soon be endorsed by President Trump, and subsequently run for the Senate. This news brought cheers to the hyper-partisan crowd, as Cassidy enjoys very little popularity in senior GOP circles after his vote to convict President Trump in the second impeachment five years ago. At least half of Gruters’ prediction came true last week.
On Saturday, January 17, President Trump announced his endorsement of Julia Letlow in a TruthSocial posting that read, “Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!” She formally joined the United States Senate race the following Tuesday.
State Rep. Mike Bayham, a Letlow supporter, speculated that an upcoming fundraiser the GOP Senate Majority Leader planned on hosting in Baton Rouge might have prompted President Trump to act sooner than he might have previously planned: “I think the Thune event for Cassidy triggered the late night Trump post [on Truth Social] for Julia for the U.S. Senate,” Bayham explained.
Trump’s endorsement certainly came as a shock to the four candidates already challenging Bill Cassidy in the U.S. Senate race, which includes La. Treasurer John Fleming, 1st District PSC Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, 22nd District State Senator Blake Miguez and 39th District State Rep. Julie Emerson. All had been vying for Trump’s endorsement, and Skrmetta, in particular, had just attended a meeting at the White House on energy policy the previous week.
Emerson dropped out on Friday, January 23, yet she is the only candidate to depart so far. In fact, Skrmetta doubled down by announcing a $3500 per person fundraiser on February 3, promoting his new book Conservatism: Endowed by Our Creator. In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Skrmetta pledged to remain in the contest, no matter what. He sees a lot of discontented conservatives eager for another choice. Partially, the reason is ideological. Louisiana’s rightwing intelligentsia is not thrilled with the President's choice of Letlow.
As 1996 U.S. Senate candidate and former State Rep. Woody Jenkins put it, Cassidy and Letlow “ARE THE TWO MODERATE REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE RACE coming up in Louisiana – not by any length the candidates most conservative Republicans will be looking at. We have strong conservatives running who have a good chance to win. Don’t let the media define the race as between these two moderate candidates because that is far from the case. FYI Cassidy and Letlow have voting records almost the same.”
The critique is a tad unfair, as it is based on American Conservative Union ratings, which put both Cassidy and Letlow at roughly 75-percent pure conservative voting records. One of the main reasons both were discounted was the effort undertaken by both to convince FEMA to change its flood maps. In other words, the desire to keep the federal government subsidizing flood insurance for tens of thousands of Louisianans—a very critical need for their constituents to remain in their homes south of the flood protection walls—may have been popular locally, but national conservative organizations rated those votes as “liberal.”
Still, Jenkins tapped into the anxiety that many local conservatives have about sending yet another moderate to D.C. Governor Landry’s motivation to reestablish the closed primary was to make it impossible for a comparative moderate like Cassidy to win renomination. Letlow, a candidate with a voting record on insurance and healthcare similar to Cassidy, doesn’t strike many conservatives as an improvement. She reminds many conservatives of how the White House parachuted former New Orleans Councilwoman and La. Elections Commissioner Suzie Terrell into the 2002 U.S. Senate race; Terrell entered the contest only due to the unabashed support of President George W. Bush, which propelled her into the runoff over more conservative candidates. Nevertheless, she ended up losing to Mary Landrieu.
Terrell’s 2002 Senate GOP opponent, Tony Perkins, a protégé of Jenkins’ and currently the head of the conservative Family Research Council, argued at the time that a more conservative candidate would have had better turnout – and perhaps won.
As an editorial by the Louisiana conservative website The Hayride argued, “Overall, [Letlow’s] scorecard numbers generally hover around 75 percent from a conservative standpoint (they’ll vary a bit based on which votes are scored); that’s pretty much exactly where Bill Cassidy sits. So what’s the point of replacing Cassidy and his seniority with Letlow if she’s going to vote just like Cassidy does?”
The editorial goes on to note that neither Fleming nor Emerson possesses much motivation to leave: “if I’m Skrmetta, Letlow getting in doesn’t phase me much. Like Emerson, I’m going to say I’ve done a hell of a lot more to fight the good fight for conservatism in the 18 years I’ve been battling on the Public Service Commission… And politically, I’m still the one candidate from the New Orleans area; Julia Letlow is absolutely unknown in my neck of the woods, so her getting in only dilutes the vote in the other parts of the state and actually increases my chance of stealing a seat in the runoff.
“And if I’m Blake Miguez I’m selling myself as the Freedom Caucus conservative legislator in the race… if you’re looking for somebody who’s different than Establishment Bill Cassidy, I’m much more that than Julia Letlow is.”
Nevertheless, Letlow is an incredibly popular congresswoman in her district. She won the Northeast Louisiana seat amidst an outpouring of public sympathy over the death of her husband, Luke Letlow, right after his election to Congress. She has proven a very hard-working constituency politician ever since, earning the affectionate title “the Steel Magnolia.”
An endorsement from President Trump in a Republican primary is usually enough to swing the core GOP vote. Whether Cassidy stays in the race remains undetermined. The last polling data available puts his approval amongst Republican primary voters at 29 percent, so his campaign launched a massive effort this month to get those registered “No Party” to cast a ballot in the May 16 primary. Pro-Cassidy text messages flowed all over the state, particularly to Democrats who might change their voter status to support the incumbent Republican senator.
So far, that effort has proven to have a few takers, to say the least. Democrats remain angered at Cassidy‘s re-embrace of Trump since he returned to the White House one year ago. With Louisiana Democrats still unable to recruit a first-tier challenger for the Senate seat, the next U.S. senator from Louisiana might be decided in the May 16 Republican primary.
