U. S. Congressman Cleo Fields addresses the Baton Rouge Press Club (BRPC) on Monday, May 4, 2026 and prepares to respond to a question posed by Robert Burns of Sound Off Louisiana regarding the 24 percent black voter turnout in the 2023 Gubernatorial election.
Today, Monday, May 4, 2026, Louisiana Sixth District U. S. Congressman Cleo Fields appeared before the BRPC to address all of the upheaval from the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the map of his District is a gerrymandered District drawn with the intent to ensure it is comprised of a majority of black residents.
In the Q & A portion of the presentation, Sound Off Louisiana’s Robert Burns posed this simple question: “Why was black voter turnout in the 2023 Gubernatorial election an abysmal 24 percent, especially given that there was a major black candidate on the ballot?” Here is Fields’ official response:
5/4/26: Fields responds to question about abysmal 24 percent black voter turnout in the 2023 race for Governor.
So, that’s his official response, but let’s delve deeper into what we assert is the real reason. First, a little background on the whole Sixth Congressional District from Louisiana as it was reconfigured at the direct behest of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on behalf of Congressman Fields:
In early 2024, following a Federal Court ruling in Robinson v. Landry that Louisiana’s prior congressional map (with only one majority-Black district) likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Gov. Landry called a Special Legislative Session. The Legislature passed SB-8 (the new map creating a second majority-black/minority-opportunity District, District 6), and Landry signed it into law in January 2024. This was done to comply with the court order while keeping control of the process away from a Federal judge.
Attorney General Liz Murrill explicitly indicated that the State would defend the resulting map against legal challenges. During her testimony to lawmakers at the Special Session, she stated (in a message later referenced in her own posts and reporting) that they should, “draw a map and I will defend it.” She and the State (as intervenors) did defend SB-8 in court, including successfully seeking a U.S. Supreme Court stay in May 2024 to allow its use for that year’s elections. At the time, they argued that the map was driven by political considerations (protecting Republican incumbents) rather than solely race, and Murrill stated that the State would, “continue to defend the law.”
The map was immediately challenged as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in Callais v. Landry (later Louisiana v. Callais). Murrill initially defended it (including at the Supreme Court), though the State’s position evolved over time. This evolving transpired by later briefing and in reargument stages. In those arguments, the State of Louisiana argued against race-based redistricting and that the VRA did not require the second district. Black voter groups ultimately became the primary defenders of the map.
Last week, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down SB-8 (6-3) as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Landry and Murrill then jointly celebrated the ruling, noted the state was enjoined from using the map, and announced that they would work with the Louisiana Legislature to redraw a new map and thus effectively abandoned any defense of the prior “new map.”
They both took it a step further and announced the cancellation of the Congressional elections in Louisiana set for Saturday, May 16, 2026 even though thousands of absentee ballots had already been cast, and early voting commenced Saturday, May 2, 2026 with the names of candidates on the ballot.
A flood of lawsuits has been filed with at least three (3) in State Court, and one in Federal Court for which a panel of three (3) judges has been convened by the Chief Judge of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case. The judges on the panel are Shelly Dick, Chief Judge of the U.S. Middle District Court (and the Judge who indicated that, if the Legislature did not draw a map ensuring a second minority District, she would), Stuart Kyle Duncan, Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit, and Greg Guidry, District Judge for the U.S. Eastern District. Fields requested that he be added as a Plaintiff in that lawsuit, and he confirmed at today’s BRPC meeting that he in fact was added “last night.”
We want to succinctly sum up where some prominent Louisiana governmental officials have stood on that original map Landry passed through the Legislature:
- Jeff Landry (Governor): He called the Special Session to enact a new map and urged legislators to act to keep map-drawing out of Federal court hands. He supported SB-8 as a way to address the Robinson litigation. The state (under his administration) defended the map in court. As referenced above, after the Supreme Court issued its ruling on April 29, 2026 striking it down, he and Murrill issued statements addressing implementation (e.g., suspending Congressional primaries for redrawing).
- Liz Murrill (Attorney General): As incoming AG (and previously involved in Robinson), she testified to legislators that they should draw a map with two majority-Black districts to avoid a court-imposed one, while noting that she would defend a new map. The AG’s office represented the State’s interests and defended SB-8 against the Callais challenge (the State intervened as a Defendant). Later developments showed shifts in defense strategy at the Supreme Court level, but the initial and primary stance was opposition to invalidating the map.
- Republican Louisiana State Senator Alan Seabaugh: He voted against SB-8, testified at trial as a Plaintiffs’ witness that race was the predominant (and essentially only) reason for the Special Session and map, and that the Legislature would have kept the prior map otherwise. He and Sen. Thomas Pressly are associated with conservative challenges to the map as a racial gerrymander. Seabaugh did not file the suit but actively supported the Plaintiffs’ case through testimony and public opposition. He contended that Gov. Landry should have simply permitted U. S. Judge Shelly Dick to draw the map, which could have then immediately been challenged (with Seabaugh contending that Dick would have had no choice but to also draw a racially gerrymandered map which would be successfully challenged), and the kind of chaos the State is now experiencing could have been avoided.
Now back to the response given by Fields about the abysmal 24 percent black voter turnout for the 2023 race for Louisiana Governor, which he attributes to “apathy.”
Well, we don’t quite subscribe to his explanation. Virtually anybody in the know on that election concedes that Fields essentially tried to charm a cobra, with that cobra being Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry! Fields has an extensive and well organized GOTV bus system which he has used very effectively to maximize black voter turnout in years past. He “charmed” Landry (the cobra) by simply agreeing not to activate that GOTV vehicle in exchange for Landry pushing a Congressional map tailor made for Fields to return to Congress after about a 28-year hiatus away from it.
Landry lived up to his end of the bargain, and that’s also why Landry and Murrill defended the map and heavily sought for it to be in effect for the 2026 election. Why? Because Landry needs Fields to once again suppress black voter turnout in 2027 for his re-election campaign to pull off a victory. That is precisely why Landry (via Murrill) fought to defend the Fields-friendly map!
The only problem with “charming a cobra” is that, once that cobra hears a note he doesn’t like, he lunges forward and takes out the “charmer” (Fields in this analogy). Well, once the three-judge panel hearing the Callais case sided with the Plaintiffs, Landry, the cobra, heard a note he did not like. As the music got further and further off key (i.e. the U. S. Supreme Court hearing the case), Landry, the cobra, began to coil up and prepare to strike the “charmer” (Fields).
Once Wednesday’s ruling from the United States Supreme Court came down, Landry, the cobra, struck full force and injected a highly venomous poison into Fields, leaving him ultimately pleading with the same body (i.e. the U. S. Supreme Court) to provide healing ointment from Landry’s vicious injection of pure poison into Fields’ veins. Fields made it clear that, whichever party may prevail in the Fifth Circuit three-judge panel referenced above, the other side is going to immediately appeal, thus placing the matter right back in the U. S. Supreme Court’s hands to decide whether Landry’s venomous strike injecting poison directly into Fields was too strong and will therefore rule that, at least for this upcoming election cycle, the current maps will remain in place.
Hopefully, Fields learned a valuable lesson from this entire episode with that lesson being: #1) Gov. Jeff Landry is a cobra and #2) when a cobra strikes, its bite and injection is typically fatal! That’s why attempting to charm a cobra is dangerous business!
CLICK HERE to see Fields’ presentation to the BRPC in its entirety.
