BATON ROUGE — U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy faced a political reckoning Saturday night as polls closed in Louisiana’s Republican primary, with President Donald Trump supporting a challenger in another attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal.

SEE FULL RESULTS HERE.

Trump endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow over Cassidy, who voted to convict the president during his second impeachment trial, which was sparked by the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, even though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.

The Louisiana primary comes in the middle of a month of campaigns by Trump to exact retribution on politicians who have crossed him. On May 5 he helped dislodge five of seven Indiana state senators who rejected his redistricting plan.

Next Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky will face a Trump-backed challenger, Ed Gallrein, in another Republican primary. Massie angered Trump by opposing his signature tax legislation over concerns about the national debt, pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposing his decision to go to war with Iran.

The president unloaded on Cassidy on Saturday morning, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy” on social media. Trump criticized the senator's impeachment vote and said “he's going to get CLOBBERED,” adding that Letlow is “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”

Jeanelle Chachere, a 66-year-old nurse, said she considers Cassidy “a phony” and she voted for Letlow solely because Trump endorsed her.

“I’m going by what he says, because I like what he does,” she said.

A third candidate is state Treasurer John Fleming. If no one gets at least 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held June 27. The GOP primary winner will almost certainly take the November general election because of the state's Republican leanings.

Election changes stir concern

The election was scrambled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting a part of the Voting Rights Act that affects how congressional maps are drawn. Although the Senate primary is moving forward, Louisiana leaders decided to delay House primaries until a future date to allow them to redo district lines ahead of time, a shift that threatened to confuse voters on Saturday.

Mary-Patricia Wray, who has consulted for Republican and Democratic candidates in Louisiana, said the change could weigh against Cassidy by dampening turnout among voters who are less fervently pro-Trump.

“Suspending the congressional primaries hurts Cassidy,” she said. “Some people believe the Senate primary is canceled.”

Cassidy also complained that a new primary system enacted last year confused voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the all-party primary previously in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.

“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters Friday.

Dadrius Lanus, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said his team fielded hundreds of calls from voters statewide who said the changes undermined their ability vote as they planned.

“A lot of the information should have gotten to voters well in advance,” Lanus said. “It’s literally been a whirlwind of confusion.”