As another likely competitive candidate enters the Republican Party Senate primary, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy’s chances become dimmer.

This week, Republican Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta joined the fray in challenging Cassidy. The incumbent already faces Republicans Treas. John Fleming and state Sen. Blake Miguez among candidates with the resources to knock him off.

Given Cassidy’s intraparty vulnerability, a third competitive challenger wouldn’t spell out good news for him. Because he placed a wrong bet – he thought GOP Pres. Donald Trump was history after the 2020 loss and, for whatever half-baked reason, decided to hitch his fortunes to Trump’s opponents and to play footsie with Democrats – he essentially divided Louisiana Republicans into three camps: those against him, the modal category; those for him; and those that in the absence of someone they perceive as a quality challenger will stick with him (who likely comprise a big portion of the undecided vote, and some of the Cassidy intended vote).

At present, he has at least two. Fleming to date largely has self-financed his bid and has the potential to spend much more. Miguez has given about half of his haul to himself, which occurred officially only after he announced his bid a couple of weeks prior to the last reporting deadline (although undoubtedly he had spent considerably longer cultivating donations ready for disbursement at an annoucnement). Both have raised in the neighborhood of $2 million, but Cassidy has raised $9 million.

But the $2 million demonstrates the pair will have the resources to be competitive, Fleming more than Miguez since the former has very deep personal pockets that can buy a lot of electioneering. However, if the latter can duplicate his fundraising success in the third quarter of the year, he’ll show the staying power to be a threat to the end. He’ll need to, as currently Fleming is seen as the main competition to Cassidy in terms of name recognition.

If Miguez can continue that, he will eat into Fleming’s support but, more relevantly, into Cassidy’s as well. Now with Skrmetta’s entrance, he’s basically where Miguez was weeks ago: not much name recognition, but if he can build that then he eats more into Cassidy’s support, by peeling off more of the “prove it” class of voters who maybe think, for example, Fleming is too old and Miguez too young and so were sticking with Cassidy. All of Fleming, Miguez, and Skrmetta are solid, consistent conservatives, so every time a quality candidate of that kind enters the race, Cassidy is disproportionately hurt the most.

Like Miguez, Skrmetta has never won statewide although in a larger district than Miguez, so he will have to expand from that base. Yet he has a pro-consumer record on the PSC which display his conservative credentials (although he let himself get boxed in somewhat on what could have been an expensive renewable resource deal) and recently pitched another money-saving idea, of switching the state to a cheaper option for its utilities to manage power supply and demand.

Now Skrmetta’s task is to gather resources to build that core name recognition that Miguez is setting himself up to acquiring and that Fleming has the lead in. Should he do so, Cassidy’s chances of making it to the general election erode further.