The next congressional elections don’t come until 2026, but the vultures (birds of prey) are already beginning to circle over Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana’s senior senator. Cassidy has been in the Senate since 2015 and would be seeking his third term in 2026.

The Advocate reported Thursday that Republican John Fleming, the state’s treasurer who was elected only last year, is beginning a campaign to unseat Cassidy. Why? Because Cassidy was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict President-elect Donald Trump of inciting a Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the nation’s Capital.

The House impeached Trump and the Senate held a trial. The Senate vote was 57 guilty and 43 not guilty but it took 67 votes to convict.

Cassidy was also the only member of the state’s eight-member congressional delegation who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s election as president in two contested states.

Trump isn’t happy about any of that, but that comes as no surprise.

Cassidy’s campaign offered perhaps the best response that we will hear when he heard about Fleming’s plans.

“I thought he wanted to be state treasurer?” Cassidy’s campaign said.

“John Fleming wants to get out of Louisiana. He publicly said he wanted a job in the Trump administration and apparently, they didn’t want him. So after less than a year as state treasurer, he’s looking for another job to return to Washington.”

The newspaper said other potential candidates include U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, who represents Acadiana; Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who represents suburban New Orleans; and U.S. Rep. Garret Graves of Baton Rouge, who will leave office in January.

Like Cassidy, Fleming is a physician. He represented Louisiana’s 4^th Congressional District from 2009 to 2017. Fleming ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but came in fifth with 11% of the vote. He served during the Trump administration as assistant secretary of commerce for economic development (2019-20).

Current U.S. Sen. John Kennedy led in the 2016 primary with 25% of the vote and won the general election with 61% of the vote. Kennedy was re-elected in the primary on Nov. 8, 2022, with 62% of the vote.

Cassidy has an outstanding record of public service. After finishing medical school at LSU, he joined the school to teach medical students and treat residents at Earl K. Long Hospital, which was a hospital for the uninsured.

The senator served in the Louisiana state Senate from 2006-2009 and in the U.S. House from 2009-2015, representing the state’s 6^th Congressional District.

Among his many contributions to his state and country, Cassidy became a lead author and vocal champion of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed during the President Joe Biden administration. Cassidy was one of seven Republicans to vote for the act.

Biden’s bill was an infrastructure bill that Trump promised during his administration, but it was a promise Trump never delivered.

The billions of dollars that Louisiana has received under the act are helping rebuild the state’s roads and bridges, giving residents increasing access to the internet, strengthening the state’s electric grid, adding levee protection and improving flood resiliency.

Cassidy is co-sponsoring a bill with a Democratic senator that would remove the cap on the amount of money that Gulf of Mexico states can receive from the federal government that is generated by oil and gas exploration and production in federal waters off their shores.

The Advocate said Cassidy’s campaign and a super PAC supporting him have raised more than $7 million. He is positioned to raise more, the newspaper said, because he will assume a powerful post as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Louisiana will have closed Democratic and Republican party congressional primaries on April 18, 2026, a second primary on May 30, 2026, and the general election on Nov. 3, 2026. Independents can vote in either party primary.

Size Cassidy up any way you want and there is little dispute that he has become one of this state’s most productive members of Congress. It defies reason that voters would be willing to give all of that away simply because Cassidy voted for what he believed was the right thing to do.

Trump, who is now this country’s president-elect, has clearly not suffered politically from that vote.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.