I am sorry CIVPAC did not endorse Bill Cassidy before the Louisiana Republican primary.
That does not mean I agree with Cassidy on every issue. I do not. Cassidy is a conservative Republican, not a centrist in the Susan Collins sense. But he was one of the few Republican senators willing to vote to convict Donald Trump after January 6, and that vote appears to have been a major reason he lost the support of many Republican primary voters. Cassidy finished third in the Louisiana Republican primary, behind Julia Letlow and John Fleming, after Trump intervened against him and endorsed Letlow.
A CIVPAC endorsement would not have changed the outcome. Louisiana Republican primary voters were not waiting for advice from a centrist independent political action committee. But endorsements are not only about winning. Sometimes they are about putting down a marker.
Cassidy’s defeat sends a message to Republican officeholders: if you break with Trump on a matter of constitutional principle, the party may eventually come for you. That is not a healthy signal for a party, or for the country.
CIVPAC does not expect elected officials to agree with us on every issue. We do expect them to respect democratic institutions, the rule of law, and the basic legitimacy of elections. Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump after January 6 was an act of institutional seriousness. It deserves recognition, especially now that it appears to have helped end his Senate career.
That said, the Cassidy record is not simple.
One reason I hesitate to turn this into a clean morality tale is that Cassidy also voted to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Cassidy is a physician and had raised serious concerns about Kennedy’s vaccine views before ultimately supporting the nomination.
In my view, that was a mistake.
Public health is an area where expertise matters. Skepticism toward bureaucracies can be healthy. Skepticism toward settled science, when elevated to the leadership of a major public-health agency, is something else entirely. Cassidy had the background, credibility, and institutional position to oppose that nomination when it mattered. I regret that he did not.
That failure should be acknowledged. But it should not erase the larger point.
Politics often forces imperfect comparisons. The question is rarely whether a candidate is ideal. The question is whether the political system rewards or punishes the traits we most need. On January 6 and its aftermath, Cassidy showed a kind of courage that has become too rare in his party. On the RFK nomination, he did not show enough of it.
Both things are true.
The larger lesson for CIVPAC is that institutionally responsible candidates should be identified and defended earlier. This is especially true when candidates face primary challenges because they respected constitutional limits, accepted legitimate election results, supported Ukraine and NATO, or refused to treat loyalty to one political figure as the highest test of public office.
The country needs two serious political parties. That requires Democrats willing to resist their left wing and Republicans willing to resist their right wing. It also requires voters and organizations willing to support candidates who pay a political price for doing the right thing.
Bill Cassidy was not a perfect candidate. No serious candidate is. But his defeat is still a warning. A party that punishes institutional courage teaches future candidates to avoid it.
That lesson is bad for Republicans, bad for the Senate, and bad for the country.