By james art Cleo Fields couldn’t walk more than a few feet during Southern University’s recent homecoming parade without someone shouting a friendly hello.
The Democratic state senator responded with back slaps, high fives and tossing mini footballs bearing Southern’s colors and his name.
Children who participate in extracurricular activities at the Louisiana Leadership Institute, a nonprofit he founded 30 years ago in north Baton Rouge, rushed to Harding Boulevard. to hug him.
“Three more weeks and I’m done,” Fields told one supporter.
Fields is heavily favored to win a congressional seat — if not in an open primary on Nov. 5, then in a runoff a month later — in a majority-black district that stretches across Louisiana like a safety belt from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.
A win would culminate a career marked by highs and lows where Fields has been counted out numerous times only to confound critics by scoring comeback victories.
Fields was elected to the state Senate at 25 in 1987 and to the US House of Representatives in 1992; lost 1995 gubernatorial run to Mike Foster; lost his seat in Congress due to court order in 1996; was re-elected to the state senate in 1997; lost race for Public Service Commission in 2004; was elected to the state Senate in 2008; and was re-elected to the state senate in 2015.
Along the way, he faced questions about a $20,000 cash payment he received in 1997 from former Gov. Edwin Edwards that was caught on FBI videotape, and speculation about whether he was living in a modest home in his Senate district or in a multimillion… dollar home near the Country Club of Baton Rouge, which is outside of it.
“He’s a survivor,” said Albert Samuels, who chairs the political science and geography departments at Southern.
Fields demurred when asked if that was an apt description.
“I’m a hard worker,” he said. “Hard work pays off. The people in politics who work the hardest in politics reap the biggest harvest.
The Republican-controlled Legislature carved out a winning district for him earlier this year when it redrawn the state’s congressional boundaries, sacrificing the seat of U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves, a white Republican from Baton Rouge who had angered Gov. Jeff Landry and U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader. Graves chose not to seek re-election.
Fields is favored because he is the most popular candidate, has raised $1 million and has a track record of winning elections.
The largest donor to Fields’ campaign is the Baton Rouge law firm of Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello, where Fields was counsel and which represents parish governments suing oil and gas companies. The Mississippi River Pilots were also generous donors to Fields’ campaign.
Who are his rivals?
Three other Democratic candidates are Quentin Anthony Anderson, Wilken Jones Jr. and Peter Williams.
Anderson is the executive chairman of The Justice Alliance, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit that works for social justice. He has contributed about $18,000 of the $28,000 he has raised through Sept. 30, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website. Anderson supports a clean energy transition that benefits local communities and wants the government to raise more money by closing corporate tax loopholes.
Jones and Williams did not raise any money, according to the FEC.
The only Republican is Elbert Guillory, an Opelousas attorney who served in the state Legislature from 2005-16. Originally elected as a Democrat, in 2013 he became Louisiana’s first black Republican state senator since the Reconstruction era after the Civil War.
“God, country and common sense” is his campaign motto.
As of Oct. 16, Guillory had raised $130,000. Guillory’s biggest donor is WinRed, a crowdfunding platform that has given him about $25,000 and raises money for Republican candidates.
Since leaving the state Senate, Guillory has run for the US House of Representatives and twice for lieutenant governor, never winning more than 8% of the vote.
A long political career
Fields, 61, was elected to the state Senate in 1987, defeating an incumbent by just 221 votes, just after graduating from Southern Law School. Was student government president at Southern as an undergraduate.
Upon his 1992 election to the US House of Representatives, Fields was the youngest member of Congress during the four years he was there. Although he considered himself very liberal—he received a zero rating from the Christian Coalition—Fields avoided personal insults and remained personally popular with both Democrats and Republicans.
In 1996, the courts ruled that the district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, prompting a redrawing of the lines that left Fields with an unwinnable district.
But voters in his northern Baton Rouge-based district elected him to a second term in the Senate in 1997 and, after serving eight years, a third term in 2019.
Over the past four-plus years, Fields has consistently voted for abortion rights, against expanded gun ownership, for a higher minimum wage, for higher teacher pay and on measures that would raise more money for state government.
He earned respect among Republicans and Democrats alike.
From 2020 to January 2024, he chaired the Senate Education Committee, appointed by then-Senate President Paige Cortez, R-Lafayette.
Cortes said he wanted to name several Democrats as committee chairs so that committee leadership would reflect the overall makeup of the Senate.
“He knew the processes of the Senate and had a wealth of knowledge,” Cortes said. “He knew federal education issues.”
Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, kept Fields as chairman this year but had him oversee the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“He’s easy to work with,” said Henry, who noted that Fields had a good working relationship with Landry because he supported Landry when he was elected attorney general in 2015.
Fields’ relationship with Landry has led to speculation, Samuels said, that the governor tapped him to preside over Senate and government affairs. That gave Fields an influential role in redrawing the new congressional boundaries that created the seat he’s poised to win.
Henry said he made the meeting without Landry’s input.
If he returns to Washington, Fields said it would make sense to work with Republicans.
“If I accept the philosophy because your approach is different than mine, I’m not going to talk to you, that’s short-sighted,” Fields said. “You’re not actually trying to solve the problem.”
His biggest focus, he said, will be improving schools.
“We have to start early,” Fields said, noting that he got the Legislature to pass a bill last year to make kindergarten mandatory. “This is the solution to our crime problem. So many people in prison have dropped out – we just haven’t invested in them early.”
Samuels said Fields endured because he was articulate and charismatic.
But Fields won’t discuss three topics.
One is why Edwards gave him the money in 1997.
“I’ve never been charged with a crime and I’ve never been convicted of a crime,” he said. “That’s all. I’ll leave it at that.’
Another is where he lives, saying his residence is the house he owns in north Baton Rouge. It has an assessed value of $138,000.
The third is his opinion of former President Donald Trump, who worked side by side with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Asked if Trump posed a threat to democracy, as Harris and many others say, Fields said, “The people of Louisiana and the country will make that decision. I’m not here to talk about Donald Trump. I’m here to talk about Cleo Fields.
Fields added that he voted for Harris.