Race for Louisiana’s new second majority-Black congressional district is heating up

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In a critical election year, the race for Louisiana’s new mostly Black congressional district is heating up as three candidates — including a longtime Democratic state lawmaker and former congressman and an 80-year-old Republican who is a former state senator — officially submitted paperwork on Wednesday to run in November.

State Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat, and former GOP lawmaker Elbert Guillory turned out on the first of three days for candidates to qualify for Louisiana’s 2024 elections. Also signing up was newcomer Quentin Anthony Anderson, a 35-year-old Democrat who is the executive chairman of a social justice non-profit.

All three men, who are Black, are hoping to win the seat of Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, which was redrawn by lawmakers earlier this year to create a second majority-minority district.

Given the new political map, which the U.S. Supreme Court recently ordered the state to use during the upcoming election, and a wide-open race that is absent of an incumbent, Democrats are looking to seize the opportunity to flip a reliably red seat blue. Across the aisle, Republicans, who have occupied the state’s 6th Congressional District seat for most of the last 50 years, are fighting to preserve the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«RELATED COVERAGE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true»