US Senator Bill Cassidy (R)
Senator Bill Cassidy breaks his silence on drawing an early primary challenger for his 2026 re-election campaign.
State Treasurer John Fleming announced last week that he will run for Cassidy’s seat, saying among other things that he’s not conservative enough for Louisiana.
“He typically has voted for bipartisan — when I say bipartisan, I mean mostly Democrat-led –legislation that spends more and more money like the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill that was advertised to fix roads and bridges, but it does none of that,” Fleming said in an interview with Louisiana Radio Network last week. “The money goes to woke investments, green new deal-type of things.”
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Cassidy said he has had better things to do than to read Fleming’s announcement, and that he’s baffled over Fleming’s intentions.
“Mr. Fleming came out saying he wanted a job in the new Trump administration,” said Cassidy. “They obviously didn’t want him, so now he wants to run for Senate. I’m just a little amused. I thought he wanted to be state treasurer. But apparently, he wants to get out of Louisiana.”
Cassidy says he will run on his record.
“We’ve done a lot,” said Cassidy. “And if I get blamed for doing things for my state, I take that blame.”
Cassidy then rattled off a series of things that he would take the blame for.
“I take the blame for $1.35 billion coming to our state to roll out broadband internet. I take the blame for $5.9 billion coming to our state from the infrastructure law to build roads and bridges. I will take the blame for over $10 billion coming to our state to date, including money for flood protection, building levees (and) flood mitigation. I take that blame, and I proudly take that blame. If somebody says that Louisiana shouldn’t get that $10.9 billion, maybe they don’t want to be in Louisiana.”
Here is the unedited audio of the exchange in its entirety:
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