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Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Julia Letlow

Election Day is November 3. Louisiana's incumbent senator is not on the ballot — his own party removed him. This is the whole race — the records, the platforms, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide.

How Louisiana got here

Start with the fact that defines this race: Senator Bill Cassidy is not the Republican nominee and is not on the November 3 ballot. Louisiana held party primaries for this race for the first time since 2010. In the May 16, 2026 Republican primary, Cassidy finished third — Julia Letlow 44.8%, State Treasurer John Fleming 28.3%, Cassidy 24.8% — and was eliminated before the runoff. In the June 27 runoff, Letlow beat Fleming 56.9% to 43.1%, carrying President Trump's endorsement. Reporting by AP and CNN ties the challenge directly to Cassidy's 2021 vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. Democrats have not won a Louisiana Senate race since 2008.

So this Class 2 seat is effectively an open-seat race with a two-candidate ballot, confirmed from the Louisiana Secretary of State's candidate inquiry: Julia Letlow, Republican, and Jamie Davis, Democrat, who won his runoff with 79.9% over Gary Crockett, carrying all 64 parishes. No third candidate appears on the Senate ballot in any source gathered.

The raters call it Republican: Cook Solid R (Oct. 20), Inside Elections Solid R (Oct. 15), Sabato's Crystal Ball Safe R (Oct. 14), DDHQ Likely R (Oct. 22). Both polls our researchers found — Hart Research in September (Letlow 48%, Davis 44%) and Public Policy Polling in July (Letlow 41%, Davis 37%) — were commissioned by the Davis campaign. Both are labeled as such here, and no independent, non-campaign polling of this race was found. On money: FEC compilations differ by reporting period and our verification pass has not yet reconciled them, so we publish only this — Davis outraised Letlow roughly three-to-one in third-quarter contributions ($1,986,749 to $683,250, per FEC filings as reported by Bayou Progressive), and Letlow held the cumulative cash advantage. We do not print a Davis cash-on-hand figure, because the compilations conflict and an unreconciled number is not a fact.

Julia Letlow (Republican)

Her record: Letlow has represented Louisiana's 5th District in the U.S. House since April 2021. The seat was won in 2020 by her husband, Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, who died of COVID-19 complications on December 29, 2020, days before he was to be sworn in. Julia Letlow won the March 20, 2021 special election with 64.86% and was sworn in April 14, 2021; she was re-elected in 2022 (67.6%) and 2024 (62.9%). She is the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Louisiana, and the first woman to represent Louisiana in the House in 30 years. She serves on House Appropriations (appointed May 2022), with Agriculture and Education and Labor service in her official biography.

Her votes and bills, sourced: She authored the Parents Bill of Rights (H.R. 5, 118th Congress) — parental oversight of curricula and library materials, public school budgets, parental consent for school medical exams — which passed the House on March 24, 2023. She voted against the Inflation Reduction Act. She opposed Iran war-powers resolutions in March and June 2026. She has said she would have objected to certification of the 2020 presidential election results had she been in office — a step she would have had a member's constitutional right to take; the position prints as fact and is priced nowhere in this article.

Her candidacy, honestly: This run exists because of the impeachment vote. Trump encouraged Letlow to challenge Cassidy in January 2026 — explicitly over Cassidy's conviction vote — and endorsed her; she announced January 20: "Louisiana deserves a conservative Senator who will not waver." Her platform, as reported: economic growth, lower costs, completing the border wall. Two black marks on the record-keeping side: she missed 5.9% of 119th-Congress roll-call votes (per politicalgrades.com, as compiled in our research), and she did not submit answers to Louisiana public radio's October 19, 2026 candidate questionnaire, which Davis did answer. A candidate asking for a promotion should answer the questionnaire.

Pros: A five-year congressional record that is conservative in votes, not just in vocabulary — the Parents Bill of Rights is her own bill, passed through her own chamber. Appropriations experience, which is where Senate power actually lives. She has already beaten, head-to-head in the same primary season, both a sitting state treasurer and a sitting U.S. senator.

Cons: The candidacy's origin is a loyalty test — a challenge launched over a single impeachment vote, at the president's encouragement. Voters who want a senator rather than a vote-with-the-president guarantee should weigh that. The unanswered questionnaire and the missed votes are the attendance record of the campaign, and they are noted.

The flaw, plainly: Letlow's flaw is that her mandate is obedience — she was recruited to punish a deviation, and she says so in gentler words herself ("will not waver"). But her House record predates the recruitment: the votes were conservative before anyone offered her a Senate seat for casting them. A reliable vote whose record matches its platform is what this seat, for our readers, is for.

Jamie Davis (Democratic)

His record: Davis is a third-generation farmer from Waterproof, in Tensas Parish, and vice president of the Tensas Parish Police Jury — the parish governing body. This is his first statewide or Senate bid; no other office held appears in the sources. He won the Democratic runoff with 79.9% (156,776 votes), carrying every parish in the state. He answered the Louisiana public radio candidate questionnaire (October 19) on coastal restoration, data centers, AI regulation, health care, and economic development — the questionnaire his opponent skipped.

His platform, sourced: Affordable healthcare, education, jobs, and defending rural hospitals; his campaign messaging centers the cost of living. His third-quarter fundraising — outraising the Republican nominee roughly three-to-one in contributions — says the campaign is real, whatever the raters say.

Pros: A farmer and a parish official is the biography Louisiana Democrats used to win with, and winning all 64 parishes in a runoff is not nothing. Rural hospitals are a genuine Louisiana issue and he owns it. He showed up for the questionnaire. There is no scandal, no Washington record, and no radical program in the sourced material — his platform is the standard Democratic platform, argued from a farm in Tensas Parish.

Cons: He is unproven at any level above a parish police jury — which, under our rules, is a watch-closely posture and not a demerit. The demerit is different: there is no evidence in the record that he has ever broken with his party on anything, because there is barely a record at all — and the platform he runs on is that party's platform whole.

The flaw, plainly: Davis's flaw is the Senate itself. A parish vice presidency tells us nothing about how a man votes when his party's leader calls in the organizing vote — and in the Senate, the organizing vote is the majority, and the majority is confirmations and the courts for a generation. The Manchin test requires proven breaks, in service, on the things that matter. Davis has had no service in which to prove one. We do not hold his thin record against him as a flaw; we hold that it cannot earn him the exception, and without the exception, a Democratic organizing vote from an unproven candidate is priced at full Senate weight.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Julia Letlow.

The criteria run cleanly. Letlow is an in-tent conservative whose five-year House record — Parents Bill of Rights, the vote against the Inflation Reduction Act, the war-powers votes — matches the platform she campaigns on; her flaws (a loyalty-test origin, a skipped questionnaire, missed votes) are stated above and priced as what they are: conduct and consistency questions, not a contrary program. Davis is a credible, scandal-free challenger who is nonetheless an unproven Democrat with no demonstrated break from his party, and caucus math in the Senate weighs at full weight. Flawed-and-proven beats unproven when the seat decides the majority.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Julia Letlow (Republican) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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