Bill Cassidy is facing pressure campaign from both sides prior to the key vote on whether RFK Jr.’s nomination should be promoted

Washington
Cnn
–

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former doctor who has spent his career on proclaiming the security of the vaccines, is likely to determine whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, becomes the country’s next health and human service secretary.

Cassidy, a former gastroenterologist with a tough re -election campaign ahead, revealed at Thursday’s confirmation hearing that he had “reservations” over Kennedy’s previous positions on vaccine security. The GOP senator then returned to his home state this weekend to two conflicting preaching: one to stick to his previously held positions on vaccines and oppose Kennedy and the other to support President Donald Trump’s nominees as he comes from a ruby ​​red State that voted overwhelming to the president and his message.

The attack of double messages is poured through the telephone lines and stacked up into the office’s E -mail inbox, where some users were notified that the site was temporarily not available due to maintenance, according to messages shared with CNN.

Cassidy, who spoke to Kennedy over the weekend, according to a source who is familiar with the case, has kept his decision close to his chest but will reveal where he stands on Tuesday when the Senate Finance Committee votes on whether to promote Kennedys nomination, one of the last steps before the full Senate would vote.

State Governor, Jeff Landry, and Louisiana Freedom Caucus, a group of Conservative State House members, each sent a letter to Cassidy last week and urged him to support Kennedy’s nomination.

One of the co -signatories, Republican Louisiana State Rep. Beryl Amedée, put Cassidy’s vote in a political context and said to CNN, “I think if he votes against this nomination, it would be like a stitch in the coffin. Too many people watching it would be like the last straw. ”

Another state legislator who signed the letter, the Republican State Representative Raymond crews, CNN told me that if Cassidy voted against Kennedy, “I think there is no way he would be re -elected, no matter how much money he has in his war box. ”

At the same time, several pro-vaccine groups launched an effort that seeks to come directly to Cassidy.

Louisiana doctors have made hundreds of emails and calls pushing Cassidy to reject Kennedy’s nomination through several pro-vaccine advocates, a source told the case to CNN.

One of the drafts of E emails, reviewed by CNN, quoted Cassidy’s own skepticism against Kennedy from Thursday’s consultation and added, “May your compassion give you strength in this difficult time and continue to embark on you at a time like this.”

The founder of Louisiana families for vaccines told CNN that her group has an uphill to climb the state.

“Louisiana families for vaccines are the first coordinated, grassroots-pro-vaccine movement in the state, and it was first founded in 2022. In contrast, the anti-vaccine movement is one of the most well-funded and influential forces that undermines public health in Louisiana and the United States, ”the group’s founder, Jennifer Herricks, told CNN.

“But now, with anti-vaccine activists nominated for the top public health positions, people are aware of what is at stake. We see unprecedented commitment, and the pro-vaccine majority speaks like never before, ”Herricks added. “Senator Cassidy has the opportunity to add his inheritance to ensure that families are informed and have access to life -saving vaccines.”

As the press campaigns continue, the Senate Republican leadership has worked to lock their members before Tuesday’s vote.

When asked if he had spent a lot of time talking to Cassidy this weekend, GOP leader John Thune said that conversations were “occurring with members of both finance and (health, education, labor and pension committee), But I mean mainly by Finance Committee because this is where he will be voted out. ”

This is not the first time Cassidy has been subjected to pressure from home when Trump’s most inner supporters went after the senator to vote to judge Trump in the second trial.

“He has cast hard voices that you know before, so he is not afraid to cast hard votes,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and co -member of the Finance Committee.

But Cassidy, says colleagues, is not one to easily bow to pressure.

“The pressure is only pressure if you feel it,” Senator John Kennedy, a colleague Louisianan, told CNN on Monday. “I’ve talked to Bill a few times over the weekend. I don’t know what he wants to do, but whatever he wants to do, he’s very calm about it. ”

Cassidy has tried to make it clear that he wants to support Trump’s agenda in the second period and has tried very carefully to pull the needle with his public comments that a vote against Kennedy is not at all a vote against Trump, but instead of a effort to protect the Trump administration from the wrong calculation that could cost them politically.

“I’m a Republican. I represent the amazing state of Louisiana, and as a patriotic American, I want President Trump’s politics to succeed in making America and Americans more secure, more prosperous, healthier, ”Cassidy said on Thursday. “But if there is someone who is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the ward and there is another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine prevention disease, helicoped to God forbids door, it will be blown up in the press. ”

In Louisiana, Kennedy is a fairly well-known figure for his voters, after being pressed in the middle of a 2021 debate that the state had about whether they should require the Covid-19 vaccine to be included in the list of immunizations that children were given to attend public school. The rule would have enabled parents to opt out of a litany for reasons, but the claim was a lightning rod where Kennedy weighed in.

During his time in the Senate, Cassidy has built up a reputation as a conscious and serious policy that sometimes leaves its obligations to certain questions, including health care and infrastructure, overpowering political considerations that can deter other legislators from jumping into the crisis.

In the midst of a meltdown over the GOP senate’s efforts to abolish and replace Obamacare in 2017, Cassidy worked with a small number of other GOP senators, including Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, to introduce a last ditch bill that would have settled Obamacare and replaced That with a controversial block grant program. The bill, which was rejected by a number of GOP members, never got a vote on the floor.

Cassidy again injected himself in a major political debate in the 2021-this time on infrastructure, where he worked with Republican then-late. Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrats to find a top -notch compromise to secure more than $ 1 trillion in funding for the country’s crumbling roads, investing in broadband and other flood limitation programs that are crucial to Cassidy’s home state of Louisiana. Trump opposed the bill and called it a “shame” and pressed GOP members to return from it and wrote at the time: “It is a gift to the Democrat Party, compliments of Mitch McConnell and some Rinos who have no idea of , what they do. ”

Cassidy voted for it anyway and secured $ 6 billion for Louisiana’s roads, which approved the construction of a larger transit road through in its state and sets out millions in financing to help protect against future flooding.

In his questioning of Kennedy over two days both in the Senate Finance and Help Committee, Cassidy tried to drill down on Kennedy’s exact positions on vaccines and how he would reform Medicaid.

When he looked directly at Kennedy during his confirmation hearing, Cassidy said, “Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments relates to me. Can I trust that it is now in the past? Can data and information change your opinion, or will you only look for data that supports a predetermined conclusion? ”

Cassidy, who detailed his medical career working in public hospitals, said a “bending point” was when he loaded an 18-year-old woman on an aerial ambulance to get a liver transplant after going into acute liver failure due to hepatitis B.

“It was the worst day of my medical career,” he said.

CNNS Manu Raju contributed to this report.