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Subject: Cleo Fields (D-La.), 4th District<
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 05:01:45 EST
Message-ID: <61.1992Nov5.050145@AmeriCast.com>

Cleo Fields (D-La.), 4th District<

A Voting Rights Act requirement to create a second majority black
district in Louisiana, combined with the loss of one House seat
to reapportionment, unleashed months of argument over the state's
political map.

The resulting 4th District, which the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate
called "a geographical nightmare," builds a two-thirds black ma-
jority by meandering from Shreveport in the northwest corner of
the state to Monroe in the northeast, Baton Rouge in the center
and Lafayette in the southern Acadiana district. It looks a lit-
tle bit like a hammer and sickle.

Fields won an easy runoff - taking 73 percent of the vote -
against fellow state senator Charles "C.D." Jones, after collect-
ing 48 percent of the vote against seven other candidates in
Louisiana's all-party primary on Oct. 3.

Only 29, Fields is younger than any current member of Congress.
He already was in his second term in the state Senate, where he
headed the government affairs committee that supervised
Louisiana's reapportionment. As a state senator, according to the
Advocate, he voted against bills to ban most abortions and op-
posed term limitations.

Yesterday, Fields announced a "transition team," which he said
would concern itself chiefly with the ticklish logistical chal-
lenge of establishing constituent services across his sprawling
new district.

"It's going to be a complicated process to put it together," said
spokesman Jeff Cowart. "This district serves five of the state's
seven major media markets."<02:48 11-05C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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