(The Center Square) — Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District was redrawn earlier this year, and the new district has a crowded field for the Nov. 5 election.
A second majority Black congressional district was signed into law in January 2024 after a federal court order. It cuts through the middle of Louisiana and spans from Caddo Parish all the way down to East Baton Rouge.
U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., currently represents the area in Congress and has since 2015. He elected not to run for reelection.
“After much input from constituents, consultation with supporters, consensus from family, and guidance from the Almighty, it is clear that running for Congress this year does not make sense,” Graves told AP news.
That leaves five potential candidates, all of which are Black and four of them are Democrats.
Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, is the fundraising leader receiving over $689,000 in campaign finances, according to Federal Election Commission data. He’s only disbursed $46,000 of that money.
By comparison, his closest Democrat challenger, Quentin Anderson, received $17,000 and spent $15,000. The only Republican challenger, Elbert Guillory, has raised no funds according to FEC data.
Wilken Jones and Peter Williams are the other Democrats in the race and like Guillory, they have no campaign cash.
Fields is the most experienced, serving three different stints in the Louisiana Senate (1988-1993, 1997-2008 and 2019 to the present) and the U.S. House for two terms from 1993 to 1997.
He was caught on videotape, aired at former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ trial for racketeering in 2000, stuffing $20,000 into his pockets in Edwards’ office in 1997. At the time, he was not in office and was never charged with a crime.
Guillory served first in the state House and then the Senate, representing his hometown of Opelousas from 2007 to 2016.
Anderson is the youngest at 36 and has no political experience. His professional experience includes working as the executive chairman of The Justice Alliance, the director of communications of the Appleseed Network and the chief operating officer of The Black Business Bureau of Baton Rouge.
Anderson’s priorities include public safety, infrastructure, and increasing the federal minimum wage. Anderson told KALB that he believes “it is important that we have representatives that are independent. I mean, I’m a Democrat, but all that means is I have a north star about how I view government working.”
According to Fields’ campaign website, his priorities include increasing the federal minimum wage, improving education and improving economic development.
According to Guillory’s campaign website, his priorities include public safety, border security, inflation and education. Guillory said he is running to help preserve the Republican majority in the House.
“We cannot risk losing this progress due to political gamesmanship from out of touch special interest groups,” Guillory said on X. “Those same special interests have continued to place our values in the crosshairs while championing some elitists’ extreme agendas.”
The new district is a result of the lawsuit known as Robinson v. Landry that was filed in 2022 to challenge congressional districts that the plaintiffs claimed did not sufficiently represent Black voters with one Black majority district out of six.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, sided with plaintiffs and ordered lawmakers to redraw the districts by Jan. 31. An appeals court denied a request for review, as did the U.S. Supreme Court and the Legislature drew new districts that were approved by Gov. Jeff Landry on Jan. 23.
Another group sued over what they consider to be “racial gerrymandering,” but the U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency stay to keep the maps in place.
