32 Facts About Cleo Fields

Cleo C Fields was born on November 22,1962 and is an American attorney and politician who serves in the United States House of Representatives, currently representing.

Cleo Fields previously represented from 1993 to 1997 and ran unsuccessfully for governor of Louisiana in 1995.

Cleo Fields has served as a member of the Louisiana State Senate on three different occasions.

Cleo Fields ran for Congress in 1990 and was defeated but was re-elected to the State Senate for the 14th district in 1991.

Cleo Fields was elected to represent Louisiana's 4th congressional district in the House of Representatives in 1992 and re-elected in 1994.

Cleo Fields ran for governor in 1995, coming in second in the jungle primary and then losing in a landslide to Mike Foster.

Cleo Fields did not run for re-election to the House in 1996 and his seat was taken by Republican John Cooksey.

Cleo Fields was elected to the State Senate in 1997 and re-elected in 2003, then running unsuccessfully for the Louisiana Public Service Commission in 2004.

On January 23,2024, Cleo Fields announced a campaign to return to Congress after court-ordered redistricting gave Louisiana a second Black-majority and Democratic-leaning seat.

Cleo Fields was born in Port Allen, Louisiana, the seventh of ten children.

Cleo Fields attended Southern University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree and Juris Doctor.

Cleo Fields began by building a base with college students in his campaign against longtime incumbent Richard Turnley.

Cleo Fields ran again in 1992, this time in the newly created 4th District, a 63 percent black majority district stretching in a "Z" shape from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.

Cleo Fields finished first in a crowded seven-way primary, coming roughly 1,500 votes short of winning outright.

Cleo Fields was forced into a runoff against fellow state senator Charles D Jones of Monroe, which Fields won with more than 73 percent of the vote.

Cleo Fields received a 0 percentage rating by the Christian Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Many in his party were angered by his candidacy, since most felt that a black challenger could not seriously win the office and Mason-Dixon Polling released on October 17,1995 showed Cleo Fields to be the loser in every possible head-to-head combination of candidates.

Cleo Fields narrowly beat the top two white Democratic candidates in the primary and made it to a runoff with Republican Mike Foster.

Cleo Fields retaliated by labeling her campaign racist and refusing to endorse her in her later race for United States Senate.

In 1997, Cleo Fields was again elected to the Louisiana Senate for the 14th district.

Cleo Fields served at the same time as his brother Wilson until Wilson Fields won a judgeship, the first time in Louisiana history that two brothers served together in the Senate.

Cleo Fields served until he became ineligible to run for re-election because of term limits.

In 2019, Dorsey-Colomb was herself term-limited, and Cleo Fields ran to succeed her.

On October 12,2019, Cleo Fields was re-elected to the 14th senatorial district, making history again by becoming the first person in Louisiana to return to the Senate for the third time.

In 1997, Cleo Fields was caught on an FBI surveillance tape stuffing about $20,000 in cash in his pockets after accepting it from then Governor Edwin Edwards.

Cleo Fields announced his candidacy for the 6th district the same day.

The new 6th contains much of the area Cleo Fields represented in his first stint in Congress.

Cleo Fields was appointed to the Committee on Financial Services for the 119th United States Congress.

Cleo Fields was named an "unindicted co-conspirator," but was never formally charged.

Jim Letten, leader of the prosecution team and later acting US attorney, said Cleo Fields came close to being indicted.

At the time, Cleo Fields stated that the incident was just an innocent business transaction between friends, and said there was a humorous explanation, which he would make public shortly thereafter.

Cleo Fields is credited with the original version of a quotation that became popular following Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election.