The main announcement made yesterday by the outgoing congressman from Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District Cleo Fields was largely known: he wasn’t going to run for re-election, and he won’t. When the Louisiana v. Callais case was decided and the state was no longer obligated to subject itself to two fringe Democrat congressmen based on race, Fields had already said he wouldn’t run against Troy Carter. That was a good indication he wasn’t going to pursue a congressional race this year.

But what he’s doing instead is a bit of a surprise.

Cleo Fields will not seek re-election to Congress, he announced Tuesday, and will instead run for a seat in the Louisiana Senate.

Fields currently represents Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, which was dissolved by the state legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Fields will run for the State Senate’s 14th District seat, last held by Larry Selders, who died at age 44 in early July.

“I feel my calling to serve the people is better put to use back home than here in D.C., and I intend to answer that call,” Fields said in a statement.

So for the second time, Cleo Fields is now going to downshift from Congress to the state legislature.

This morning I did a segment with Brian Haldane on Talk 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge talking about this subject, and Brian and I agreed that it’s almost assured Fields will win that special election to replace Selders. I said I’d be shocked if anybody bothered to run against him.

It’s utterly obnoxious that somebody who’s a member of Congress would drop down to the state senate. That’s the opposite direction proper politicians move in. Fields has now done it twice. Generally speaking, Major League baseball players who’ve had long careers and made their money don’t drop down to Double-A ball when the big-league team releases them, and politics generally works the same way.

But Haldane raised another question which is really interesting, and I brought up the idea that LAGOP chairman Derek Babcock might consider bringing litigation on this, which is how Fields jumping into the state senate race to succeed Selders would affect him  with respect to term limits.

It’s become exceptionally hazy to analyze just how far along he is, because Louisiana’s term limits law is utterly Byzantine in that it allows a politician to spend three terms in one legislative body and/or three terms in the other, and it also allows the limit to reset if a legislator sits out a cycle.

But as to the Louisiana Senate, Fields was elected to that body in this last stint in 2019. He didn’t run for re-election, apparently, in 2023 – opting to run for Congress in 2024 instead (I didn’t remember that; the concept of there being an election cycle in Louisiana Cleo Fields wasn’t a candidate in seeming to be foreign and unfathomable). So if Fields had passed on running in the special election, the way I understand it having done some research on this, he would have bought himself a full 12-year eligibility for Senate service (assuming he continued winning elections, which is an ironclad assumption; Cleo Fields never loses an election in a majority-black district). As is, getting a year in Selders’ seat will put Fields on a track to fulfill the second term of his current three; he could still run for re-election in 2027 but he’d be termed out in time for the 2031 cycle.

Unless he wanted to run for the state House in 2031. He’d be eligible to do that and he’d also be able to run for re-election in 2035 and 2039 if he wanted.

Meaning that we could conceivably have Cleo Fields in the Louisiana Legislature until January of 2044. Or, for that matter, he could run again for the Senate in the 2043 cycle, and so long as he kept on winning he’d be around until 2056.

He’s 63 years old and in pretty good health. Don’t bet against this guy being a fixture at the state capitol for at least the next five years and maybe a whole lot longer than that.

Fields was first elected to the Louisiana Senate in 1987.

And now you understand the abject absurdity that is Louisiana’s legislative term limits law, and why consecutive term limits need to be scrapped in favor of lifetime term limits. Three terms in the House and three terms in the Senate is plenty enough time to slake a politician’s thirst for “public service;” if you can’t move up or out from the Legislature after 24 years it means the folks don’t think you’re good enough, and it’s time to get a real job.

Do I have any confidence somebody will pass a bill to knock this absurdity down a little and stop the constant comebacks in the Louisiana legislature? Not really. It ought to be done, though – if for no other reason than to watch Fields or his defenders try to make the case that the bill is racist, or something, when it’s brought.

In the meantime, Cleo Fields is telling us that he’s not going away, and probably that he never will, and that there is nothing we can do about it.