A group aligned with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spending $1 million to help Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a contested Senate primary, its leader said on Feb. 9.
Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, said during a Heritage Foundation event in Washington that Letlow supports measures popular with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, including medical freedom and healthy school lunches.
“We found that there really are points of contact with her that are really going to be impressive to the MAHA movement as they get to know her better,” he said.
Lyons said the $1 million will help Letlow beat Cassidy, without detailing why there’s opposition to the senator.
Letlow and Cassidy did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, publicly debated whether to vote to confirm Kennedy as health secretary before announcing that he was doing so after talking with Kennedy and securing what he described as multiple commitments, including a commitment that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not remove statements on its website that said vaccines do not cause autism.
The updated webpage maintains the phrase “vaccines do not cause Autism” with an asterisk that states, “the header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement” with Cassidy.
Cassidy told The Epoch Times via email at the time that he would win.
“I am a conservative who wakes up every morning thinking about how to make Louisiana and the United States a better place to live,” he said.
Letlow wrote on Facebook over the weekend that “when it was time to stand with President Trump, Bill Cassidy cut and ran.” She added, “I’m a fighter, and I won’t back down when the pressure’s on.”
She also recently told local broadcaster KTBS that she is a strong supporter of the MAHA movement.
“I want to make sure our children are healthy and have access to food that is going to enrich their lives,” she said.
Lyons, whose publishing company has published Kennedy’s books and who co-chairs the MAHA political action committee, said Monday that the Louisiana race is an example of how the MAHA movement is approaching the midterm election.
“We’re here to support that incredible team that’s been put into place and to back that coalition and make sure that they’re able to continue doing their work,” he said.
“And that’s going to mean following the lead of President Trump when he endorses candidates and then trying to work with those candidates to try to get the best possible outcome for public health for the issues that MAHA has been backing over the last year.”
“We think there’s a really great partnership that we can have with candidates all around the country to help them win, to help preserve this coalition, but also to make them more clear on what the MAHA issues are, what the science is behind them, what the propaganda and censorship in the past has obscured from the public, so that they can then message that better and they can win in their races,” he added later.
Kennedy, who spoke at the same event, did not mention the midterms. He praised Trump, describing him as friendly towards businesses and businesspeople.
“He loves them, but he will not tolerate overreach, and he doesn’t care about vested interests, and he doesn’t care about offending powerful people,” Kennedy said.
“So it’s a joy to work for him because he lets me do stuff that I don’t think anybody else would ever let me do.”
