Protect Troy or protect Cleo?
That was the messy and politically difficult choice that state legislators and Gov. Jeff Landry appeared to face in the immediate aftermath of federal court rulings and a decision by Landry that would lead lawmakers to redraw Louisiana’s six congressional districts.
Republicans were bent on eliminating either the Black-majority Democratic district held by U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge or the one held by U.S. Rep. Troy Carter of New Orleans. Would lawmakers draw a new map that favored Fields or Carter?
In a Legislature where Democrats and Republicans form friendships and often work closely together, that prospect threatened to drive a wedge on both a personal and political level — until Fields resolved the problem last week by announcing he would not run against Carter.
In an interview by phone from Washington D.C. on Thursday, Fields said he has found the U.S. House to be a much different place since he returned to Washington following his 2024 election, after having served in the House three decades ago for four years.
Fields, 63, said his decision to stand aside for Carter wasn’t a difficult one.
“I fought against putting Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the same district all my life because the state has a sizeable majority-minority population,” he said. “I just wanted the Legislature to know right out of the bat that that wasn’t something I would be interested in, no matter how favorable they would have made it towards me.”
Fields’ announcement cleared the way for the Republican-controlled Senate — over the vociferous objections of Democrats — to approve a map Thursday on a 27-10 vote that creates five safe Republican seats and one safe New Orleans-anchored seat for Carter.
That map, contained in Senate Bill 121, turns Fields’ 6th Congressional District — which stretches like a seat belt from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, picking up Black precincts along the way — into a White-majority district centered around Baton Rouge.
SB121 now moves to the House, where passage in that Republican-controlled chamber seems assured. The new House maps would be on the ballot in November.
A changing Congress
People close to Fields said he hasn’t enjoyed his return to the House, beginning in 2025, nearly 30 years after he served there from 1993-97.
Fields, though, said he enjoys the work, especially visiting with constituents at town halls and cutting through the bureaucracy to get those owed veterans benefits or Social Security checks.
But the partisanship these days is a marked change, he said.
“It all starts with the president, the leader of the country,” Fields said. “He has been so divisive.”
During his 26 years in elected office, Fields has earned a reputation for being able to work with Republicans.
But now, he added, cabinet “secretaries for the most part don’t respond to members of Congress unless they’re of the same party. It’s a different feel from how it used to be 30 years ago.”
Political maneuvering
When the Legislature began to work on drawing new maps two weeks ago, state Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, who chairs the Senate committee that would first take up redistricting, said he favored a Baton Rouge-oriented map. That would favor Fields.
But Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, whose district includes Uptown New Orleans, was known to favor a New Orleans-oriented map. That would favor Carter.
A legislative fight appeared to be brewing, with political insiders saying Fields’ close working relationship with Landry could tip the balance in his favor.
“It was difficult to see who we would pick and choose,” Kleinpeter said Thursday.
But Fields simplified the decision by saying he would not run in the same district as Carter.
“That would be a bad move for this Legislature to put both Baton Rouge and New Orleans, two incumbents, in the same district,” he told reporters. “I can’t be clearer. Do it for somebody else.”
Fields has emphasized that he will keep fighting the map that Republicans have drawn, saying that Democrats deserve two winnable districts in the state.
Protecting Carter’s district has meant that legislators could draw a new map similar to what they approved in 2022, which was in place for two years. That map also protected five Republican seats, including those of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents northwest Louisiana, and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who represents suburban New Orleans.
Under SB121, Carter’s new district would extend further up the Mississippi River, into East Baton Rouge and Iberville parishes.
A long career
Fields’ decision to stand down after what will be a final two years in the House appears to end a political career that began nearly 40 years ago and has had numerous ups and downs.
Fields first won election to the state Senate in 1987 as a 24-year-old, third-year law student at Southern University.
He was elected to the U.S. House in 1992, ran for governor in 1995 but lost to Mike Foster in the runoff, and lost his congressional district after courts ruled in 1996 that his district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
But voters in his north Baton Rouge-based district elected him to a second set of terms in the state Senate in 1997. He served 12 years, sat out eight years, and won a third set of terms to the Senate in 2019.
In 2024, thanks to a close working relationship with the Republican leadership, he chaired the Senate committee that oversaw the redrawing of a new congressional map that gave him the Baton Rouge-to-Shreveport district that he won that fall. That’s the district that the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated as an illegal racial gerrymander.
Speculation on Fields’ next career move inevitably involves Southern. He has undergraduate and law degrees from the university, and his close friend Tony Clayton, the district attorney of West Baton Rouge, Pointe Coupee and Iberville parishes, chairs Southern’s board.
“I don’t know,” Fields said Thursday when asked about what he’ll do after his term ends in January. “We’ll see what ultimately happens with the redistricting process in Louisiana. Then I’ll make my decision after that.”
