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Meet the Candidate: Cleo Fields running for Louisiana's 6th Congressional District
LOUISIANA (KLFY) -- Running for Louisiana's 6th Congressional District, Senator Cleo Fields aims to finish the work he started decades ago.
The Baton Rouge native currently serves as Louisiana's 14th district state senator. Fields served two Congressional terms in the 90s until he was redistricted out of his seat.
"There is nothing new about running for Congress for me. It's not my first rodeo, as I have represented every area of the district before," Fields said.
According to his website, Fields earned his law degree from Southern University Law Center in 1987 and was elected into the Louisiana Senate that same year. He, aged 24 then, was the youngest person elected to the State Senate in Louisiana's history at that time.
Fields said the first time he was elected to Congress, he held a record number of town hall meetings because he believed in bringing Congress to the people.
"There is a big divide between Congress and [the] community, and we want to close that gap so that Congress will feel connected to the community again," he said.
His priorities include education, minimum wage, economic development, mental health and the fentanyl crisis.
Fields said he wants to raise the minimum wage because people "work hard every day and at the end of the day, they are still poor. He noted it is not because the workers are lazy, rather "we're not paying them for the work they do."
He said that while there is not a lack of petrochemical jobs in Louisiana, the state is short on opportunities in the tech field. He believes that is a contributing factor in graduates not staying in Louisiana.
Other issues he plans to address if elected to Congress are the fentanyl crisis and mental health.
"I'm one who's going to address that problem," Fields said. He said many young people are dying from overdoses and "we have to do something to stop it."
If elected back into Congress, Fields said he can continue fighting for his constituents in every area they need.
"There is some sense of excitement among people that I'm back and they are ready to hopefully send me back to Congress so I can finish the work that I've started," he said.
Fields said when people line up to cast their votes, he hopes they remember him when voting to move Louisiana forward.