A press release popped out of Julia Letlow’s camp yesterday, in the wake of the debate she had with John Fleming on Moon Griffon’s show on Tuesday. It seems like this is going to be treated as a big deal…

BOMBSHELL: FLEMING CONFESSES HE IS STILL ON DC LOBBYING FIRM PAYROLL

Fleming is cashing checks from a DC lobbying firm while holding statewide office

BATON ROUGE, LA — During today’s debate, John Fleming said it’s “perfectly ok” that he is an active employee of The McKeon Group, a Washington DC lobbying firm, while serving as Louisiana State Treasurer and running for the United States Senate.

Fleming’s U.S. Senate financial disclosure, filed under penalty of perjury, lists $41,500 in salary from The McKeon Group, Inc. and $120,217 in salary from the State of Louisiana. The same disclosure lists Fleming’s role with McKeon Group as continuing from January 2024 to present, identifying him as an Advisor while also listing him as Louisiana State Treasurer during the same period.

McKeon Group’s own website also lists Fleming as an employee. The firm has publicly described itself as a consulting and lobbying firm with Capitol Hill expertise.

“John Fleming admitted today that he is still employed by a DC lobbying firm while serving as Louisiana State Treasurer,” said Letlow Communications Director Katherine Thordahl. “That is a serious breach of trust that Fleming did not disclose to the voters while running for office.”

Fleming’s disclosure also identifies a McKeon Group client, Cyber Innovation Center, and describes Fleming’s duties as “consulting and advising on federal funding for national defense projects.”

Fleming should immediately answer the following questions:

• Did Fleming receive a formal advisory opinion from the Louisiana Board of Ethics approving his continued paid employment with The McKeon Group?
• Did Fleming perform McKeon Group work during state business hours or use any taxpayer-funded resources for firm business?
• Has Fleming used his title, relationships, or access as State Treasurer to benefit The McKeon Group, its clients, or prospective clients?
• Has The McKeon Group used Fleming’s title as Louisiana State Treasurer in pitches, client conversations, business development materials, or federal funding discussions?
• Has Fleming taken any official action as State Treasurer involving an entity that was also a McKeon Group client, prospective client, affiliate, contractor, or partner?
• Is any portion of Fleming’s compensation tied to federal funding, client success, lobbying outcomes, business development, or client retention?
• Will Fleming release his full contract with The McKeon Group, all payment records, all client assignments, and all ethics correspondence related to his outside employment?

What caught our attention about this isn’t that it’s a big outrage that some DC lobbying firm was paying Fleming $3500 a month. That isn’t really enough money to “buy” him; sometimes an employer will pay a maintenance salary to somebody just to keep the relationship going in the event he’d become available to work full-time for them.

But is it a little greasy? Maybe.

Fleming’s camp responded to this by blasting Letlow for her engagement to a prominent lobbyist plying his trade at the Louisiana Capitol – and Kevin Ainsworth has been lobbying on the side of the carbon-capture crowd to boot, which is even worse from their perspective.

We’re a little bored by this back-and-forth, actually. By the time you’re prominent enough in American politics to run for the U.S. Senate, you’re going to be completely enmeshed in the network of lobbyists, corporate interests, advocacy groups and assorted grifters the business of political power attracts. Nobody’s clean. Is Fleming more mobbed-up with lobbyists and fixers than Letlow is? She’s only really been in politics since 2021; before that she was in university administration and married to a guy who was. Fleming’s been in politics since 2008.

You’d generally say both of them are cleaner than Bill Cassidy is.

What we would say, though, is that for Julia Letlow’s camp to be beating on John Fleming and not Bill Cassidy – Cassidy skipped out on the debate on Griffon’s show and gave a super-lame excuse that Fleming and Letlow were advertising on the show; Cassidy has advertised on it for years – might give you a window into Team Letlow’s assessment of the race.

There are a couple of polls out with different results between Letlow and Fleming. They both say the same thing about Cassidy, though – which is that he’s in third place.

Emerson College, which polled the race a week ago:

A new poll shows Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary remains a tight three-way contest, with no candidate positioned to secure an outright majority and avoid a runoff.

The Emerson College Polling/KLFY News 10 survey released Thursday found Treasurer John Fleming leading with 28% support, followed closely by U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow at 27%, while incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy trails with 21%, and 22% of voters remain undecided.

“If the Republican Primary for Senate were held tomorrow, the poll indicates the race would move to a June runoff, as no candidate appears to meet the 50% threshold,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement released with the survey.

“Fleming’s strength is among male voters, who support him over Letlow 36% to 27%; 20% of men support Cassidy,” Kimball added, noting that “women are more split: 27% support Letlow, 23% Cassidy, and 21% Fleming.”

Greg Rigamer polled the race at about the same time:

The poll (April 28-30; 600 LVs; +/-4%) was conducted for lobbyist Alton Ashy, who runs Advanced Strategies Inc. and helped organize a Letlow fundraiser during Washington Mardi Gras earlier this year

Here is the poll: pic.twitter.com/zrJcrNbAjG

— Nicholas Anastácio (@NenoNicolosio) May 5, 2026

Is Letlow that far ahead? We’ll find out next weekend. We’re a little dubious about it.

But we’re convinced that right now Cassidy is in third despite spending a whole lot more money than the others. We might be convinced that Letlow is a better bet to make the runoff than Fleming is, at least in the event Rigamer’s poll is accurate and Emerson isn’t.

From a conservative voting standpoint, the signal that would send is that if you really want to get rid of Bill Cassidy first and foremost, maybe Fleming is who you want to vote for. Boost him into the runoff with Letlow, and then whatever happens, the signal has been sent that Cassidy voting for President Trump’s impeachment in 2021 was a punishable offense and it was duly punished at the next election.

We don’t think there’s a scenario where it’s a Fleming-Cassidy runoff. Not with Jeff Landry and Donald Trump backing Letlow and her polling at least in the high 20’s in all of the recent polls.

The fact that Letlow, less than 10 days out, is beating on Fleming rather than Cassidy tells you that either she thinks Cassidy is cooked and we’re starting the runoff now, or she’s trying to beat Fleming down so that she can get Cassidy, who’s more or less a political carcass, in the runoff.

What kind of runoff would Letlow and Fleming give us? We’ve already seen it.

Fleming is going to hammer away at carbon capture, and he’s going to trash Landry and Letlow as supporters of it. Fleming is also going to harp on Letlow as Landry’s puppet and beat on Landry as a Huey Long wannabe. Fleming will tar and feather Letlow over the DEI stuff, as they should – it’s an excellent line of attack, though as we noted earlier, what it says about her isn’t really that she’s a leftist but rather a careerist.

Letlow’s camp is going to minimize Fleming as a fringe candidate, argue that Fleming worked in the first Trump administration and yet couldn’t get his endorsement, and what does that say about Fleming, and they’ll hack away at him as a hypocrite over things like the retainer/salary that McKeon is still paying him.

It’ll be snippy and chippy. It won’t really be a battle of ideas. There isn’t all that much difference ideologically between Fleming and Letlow. Fleming is probably more conservative, but Letlow’s record in Congress is that she votes with the GOP’s leadership every time she’s asked to, and that isn’t going to change.

But no matter how nasty it might get, the big picture would be that Cassidy is done after this year, and that seems to be the one consensus item in the race.