Cassidy and Massie Lose Congressional Re-Election Bids
By Vivienne Mockenhaupt ’27
On Saturday, May 16, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) lost his bid for re-nomination in the Louisiana Republican primary for the 2026 midterm elections, and Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) fell to another Republican contender on Tuesday, May 19.
Cassidy, a two-term incumbent, had defied President Donald Trump by voting to convict him of incitement to insurrection in the Senate impeachment vote that followed the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots and then refusing to endorse him in the 2024 general election. He faced the president’s ire despite his attempts to return to the Republican establishment fold, with Trump ultimately endorsing an opponent and causing him to lose. Per the BBC, congresswoman Julia Letlow—whom the president recruited to run—and state treasurer John Fleming will face off in a primary runoff in June.
Cassidy, a licensed physician, has served two terms in the Senate and chaired the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee during that time, as reported by The Hill. In the years since he opposed Trump, he has tried to find favor with the president once more, walking back his previous statements and supporting the current administration’s policy agenda. However, his loss at the polls has given him a newfound freedom; on Tuesday, May 19, he flipped his vote on a resolution to end US involvement in the Iran war after having voted against it repeatedly, per NBC News. With no more elections to campaign for—according to Politico, Cassidy announced when conceding the primary that this loss would mark the end of his career in electoral politics—he is at liberty to toe the party line a bit less carefully and criticize his fellow Republicans as he pleases. Indeed, during his concession speech, he remarked that if a politician “attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.” As reported by Axios New Orleans, he received 25% of the vote on Saturday, while Letlow received 45% and Fleming 28%; no candidate gained a majority lead, resulting in the scheduling of runoffs next month.
Massie, meanwhile, was one of the two House Republicans who voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He continued to criticize the president’s interventionist foreign policy and spearheaded the fight to release files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein this past fall, as reported by NPR. In an interview with The Economist just a month prior to the primary election, he described himself as “not on the [Republican party] bandwagon,” citing his breaks with the party line as a reason why he believed he might lose his reelection bid. An engineer by training, he worked in technology prior to beginning his political career, at which point he returned to Kentucky and built his own homestead and farm; his platform has long revolved around small government and libertarian principles. According to The Washington Post, Trump chose to back former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who has claimed that Massie defaulted to the side of the “radical left.” Ultimately, Gallrein won by 9.6% of the Republican vote per NPR; the Associated Press called the race Tuesday evening.
These two losses came as stinging defeats for the anti-MAGA (or Make America Great Again) movement within the Republican party, as the candidates that the president chose to endorse continued to secure victory. Trump has next endorsed Ken Paxton, the current attorney general of Texas, in his bid for Senate. Paxton is challenging four-term incumbent John Cornyn, whom Trump deemed unsupportive in a Truth Social post, as reported by Al Jazeera, and Democratic nominee James Talarico. The Texas runoff elections will be held on Tuesday, May 26.