BATON ROUGE — Louisiana voters promoted Julia Letlow from the U.S. House to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, a bright spot for a Republican Party ravaged by the public’s concerns over high fuel prices, an unpopular war in Iran and burgeoning inflation.

National polls in advance of Tuesday’s general election showed dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, who had endorsed the northeastern Louisiana congresswoman and held a “tele-rally” for her the night before the election.

Negative advertising also targeted Letlow after she benefited greatly from stock purchases made after signing a non-disclosure agreement regarding data center developments in her home district. The Gulf States Newsroom reported Letlow didn’t disclose the purchases for more than a year despite a law requiring notice within 45 days.

But Democratic Party candidate Jamie Davis couldn’t make sufficient headway in reliably red Louisiana. 

Cassidy and Sen. John Kennedy, in 2020 and 2022 respectively, won re-election without the need for a runoff.
Letlow won a party-specific primary set up to stack the deck against Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. House members had impeached the then lame-duck president amid his unfounded claims that Democrat Joe Biden had not won the 2020 presidential election.

Cassidy ran third in the GOP primary.

In the June runoffs, Letlow defeated state Treasurer John Fleming, taking 57 percent of the vote. Davis, meanwhile, defeated Navy veteran and businessman Gary Crockett in the June Democratic primary by a 4-1 margin.

Letlow gave up a safe seat from Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District to challenge Cassidy and quickly earned Trump’s backing. She won a special election in 2021 to serve the term initially won by her husband Luke, who died 10 days after saying he had tested positive for COVID-19.

From Reconstruction to the early 2000s, Democrats held both U.S. Senate seats from Louisiana, including all since the public began electing senators following passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.

David Vitter defeated Kennedy and others in 2004, when Kennedy was a Democrat, and won re-election six years later. He didn’t seek re-election after losing the governor’s race to Democrat John Bel Edwards in 2015.

Cassidy defeated incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu in 2014 and won re-election in 2020.

For more election results around the state, check out our election guide.