Bill Cassidy faces voters after being betrayed by RFK Jr. and targeted by Trump

BATON ROUGE, La. — When it comes to Bill Cassidy, almost everyone in Louisiana politics, supporters and detractors alike, feels bad for the senator.

During his 20 years as a politician, he was mostly a doctor in the clothes of a congressman. He sticks to the evidence and carefully calculates the right policy prescription for the problem at hand, according to more than a dozen people who have worked with or for him. These qualities, along with his first-hand knowledge of America’s health care system, have made him a respected leader on this issue on Capitol Hill.

He may have reached the pinnacle of power. He heads a Senate committee that oversees health care policy, with Republicans in charge of the entire federal government, and health care affordability has emerged as a top political issue ahead of the midterm elections. He has led Republicans on health reform plans for nearly a decade, and his recent policy proposals have sometimes been more similar to President Trump’s than those of many of his colleagues.

Instead, Cassidy, 68, is increasingly putting aside his health insurance eligibility to justify MAGA. He faces an arduous May 16 primary battle to retain his Senate seat, with President Trump and the politically powerful Make American Healthy Again movement backing one of his challengers.

Some polls have Mr. Cassidy trailing his rivals, Mr. Trump supporter Rep. Julia Letlow and Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming, but the data is far from conclusive.

But win or lose, Mr. Cassidy’s friends, allies and critics told STAT that Mr. Cassidy is unlikely to fully recover from the collapse of his stature and power, as the political landscape requires Republicans to either fully cooperate with Mr. Trump or abandon him. Friends say Cassidy has played both roles, voting according to his conscience as a doctor while also trying to support the president. The result is a political party that denounces Trump as a Republican simply because he cast an important vote against him, and a health care establishment that is appalled by what it sees as a betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath and an erosion of Trump’s own legacy.

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