Mud slinging has begun in the Cassidy-Letlow US Senate showdown

Just a couple of weeks after declaring her candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Republican Congresswoman Julia Letlow finds herself in the crosshairs of an attack ad that tries to paint her as an anti-Trump liberal despite having the president’s endorsement.

The smear campaign is airing days before candidates will officially enter the race to challenge incumbent GOP U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy. Qualifying runs Wednesday through Friday for Louisiana’s party primaries in its congressional races, set for May 16. Runoffs, if necessary, will take place June 27.

The president snubbed Cassidy, who’s held his Senate seat since 2015, for his vote to convict Trump for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The spot slamming Letlow says she voted for the Biden administration’s agenda more often than any other Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives and that she failed to disclose hundreds of stock trades before a required deadline for congressional candidates. 

Letlow’s work before she was elected to Congress is also targeted in the ad, which accuses her of approving “radical DEI policies” during her time as an administrator at the University of Louisiana Monroe.

Robert Collins, a political analyst and public policy professor at Dillard University, pointed to private polling that already shows Letlow with an edge over Cassidy. He anticipated the Cassidy camp would mount an offensive against Letlow but said he didn’t expect it would be so harsh or so soon. 

“He’s trailing behind a congresswoman from a district that doesn’t really get a whole lot of national press, and so I think they’re panicking,” Collins said. “I think that [the Cassidy campaign] felt that they had to come out with a really strong attack to try and reduce some of her favorability numbers right away.”

Pollster Greg Rigamer surveyed Republican voters in Louisiana for lobbyist Alton Ashy, who told The Times-Picayune he helped organize fundraisers for Letlow during Washington Mardi Gras. Rigamer’s poll of 600 Republican voters showed Letlow getting 57% of the vote against Cassidy in a runoff.

The pot-stirring commercial was paid for by the Louisiana Freedom Fund, a spend-only political action committee, or super PAC, that opposes Letlow. The group spent nearly $890,000 to place video ads slamming her voting record according to the filing it submitted Monday to the Federal Elections Commission. Commercials have also aired on Louisiana radio stations this week.  

Efforts to reach the Letlow campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

The congresswoman admitted last month she did not file the required report for more than 200 stock and bond transactions before the required deadline. She has since updated her disclosure statements going back to 2020.

Lawmakers have to report any private equity transaction worth more than $1,000 within 45 days under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. If a report is filed more than 30 days late, members can be fined $200 for each instance and could face investigation from the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Conduct or the U.S. House Ethics Committee.

The ad’s claim that Letlow voted with the Biden administration more often than any other Republican representative conflicts with analysis from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, which authored the Project 2025 blueprint that’s largely shaped the agenda of the second Trump administration.

Letlow cast votes for 62% of the bills in the 188th Congress, from 2023-24, that the Heritage Foundation deemed important to its mission. That rate placed her ahead of 68 other Republican House members, including every member of the Louisiana GOP delegation other than U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins of Lafayette. 

From 2021-22, Letlow’s first term in the 5th District seat, she supported the Heritage Foundation’s legislative agenda 87% of the time, just behind the House Republican average score of 89%.

Letlow’s “lifetime score” from the Heritage Foundation is 75%, compared with 62% for Cassidy. Cassidy received a 46% rating for his 2023-24 voting record and 72% for the first two years of the Biden administration. 

In the ad bashing Letlow, the narrator mentions Louisiana Freedom Fund is solely responsible for its content, implying the Cassidy campaign did not have a hand in crafting the message. Federal election law prohibits super PACs from coordinating directly with candidates or political parties.

However, the current statement of organization for the Louisiana Freedom Fund, updated in June, lists the Cassidy Leadership Fund as a “joint fundraising representative.”

Political campaigns have operated in this gray area since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission, Collins said. The 2010 decision in favor of Citizens United, a conservative organization, determined the government could not limit the political spending of corporations, nonprofits or unions. It effectively led to the wide-open flow of “dark money,” allowing donors to provide unlimited donations to candidates and causes.

Since the Citizens United decision, it has been difficult to define exactly what is “coordination” between a super PAC and a political campaign, Collins said. In this climate, election regulators see few if any complaints from political interests who have caught the opposition red-handed.

“I don’t think you’re going to have any lawsuits of anybody running to the U.S. attorney and complaining about it because both sides do it. Both parties do it all. Candidates do it,” Collins said.