The congressman from the 4th District is Republican John Fleming. He grew up in Meridian, Miss., the son of a utility substation operator who worked two or three jobs to make ends meet. His father died of a heart attack just before Fleming finished high school. His mother was disabled and so relied on Social Security to support Fleming and two younger siblings. After undergraduate and medical school at the University of Mississippi, he spent six years in the Navy, where he did his medical residency. He later opened a family medical practice in Minden, La., and in the 1990s served as coroner of Webster Parish. He had another sideline: Fleming operated 30 Subway restaurants in the state and had a stake in 130 UPS stores, from Mississippi to Texas. He also wrote a book called Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction. Read More

The congressman from the 4th District is Republican John Fleming. He grew up in Meridian, Miss., the son of a utility substation operator who worked two or three jobs to make ends meet. His father died of a heart attack just before Fleming finished high school. His mother was disabled and so relied on Social Security to support Fleming and two younger siblings. After undergraduate and medical school at the University of Mississippi, he spent six years in the Navy, where he did his medical residency. He later opened a family medical practice in Minden, La., and in the 1990s served as coroner of Webster Parish. He had another sideline: Fleming operated 30 Subway restaurants in the state and had a stake in 130 UPS stores, from Mississippi to Texas. He also wrote a book called Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction.

The House seat came open when influential Rep. Jim McCrery, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, announced his retirement in December 2007. The early front-runners for the GOP nomination were trucking-company executive Chris Gorman and Bossier Chamber of Commerce President Jeff Thompson, who was supported by McCrery and the National Republican Congressional Committee. In the first round of voting, Fleming led with 35%, to 34% for Gorman and 31% for Thompson. Next came a runoff campaign with Gorman. Both men held similar, conservative views, emphasizing the need to reduce federal spending and taxes, and both spent heavily. Fleming spent over $1 million, much of it his own money, while Gorman spent $1.8 million. Fleming captured the nomination 56%-44%.

Meanwhile, Democrats lined up behind Paul Carmouche, a 30-year Caddo Parish district attorney who styled himself as a centrist Blue Dog Democrat and ran an anti-abortion rights and anti-crime campaign. Fleming emphasized his own conservative credentials, calling himself a Ronald Reagan Republican. He called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the current income tax with a national sales tax. And he said he favored tough measures against illegal immigrants, decrying an “invasion by illegal aliens.” Fleming out-raised Carmouche $1.4 million to $1.2 million and got a big helping hand from the NRCC.

The election was held on Dec. 6, 2008, after being delayed a month by the threat from Hurricane Gustav. Fleming won by 350 votes. Carmouche led 57%-39% in Caddo Parish, which cast 43% of the vote. He also took four rural parishes outside Shreveport, but Fleming ran strongly in the southern part of the district and in Bossier.

In the House, Fleming established himself as an unyielding conservative. His fondness for fiery rhetoric has drawn admiration from those on the far right, but even some members of his party have come to regard him as a loose cannon. One of the first Republicans to join the Tea Party Caucus, he regularly took to the House floor to make speeches bashing President Obama. In one newspaper column, he accused the president of “undermining this country’s national defense on purpose.” During the health care overhaul debate, he sponsored a resolution requiring lawmakers who backed a federally backed insurance plan to enroll in one and said, “How dare Congress force government-run health care down the throats of our fellow Americans?” Fleming also drew scorn from progressives when he publicly supported a Florida urologist’s decision to deny care to patients who supported Obama, saying it was that doctor’s “First Amendment right.”

Democrats acutely missed having a candidate as formidable as Carmouche to take on Fleming in 2010. The party’s nominee was David Melville, a Methodist minister who sought to portray the congressman as too partisan. Fleming did raise some eyebrows with an August appearance at a forum in which he cast the election as a choice between godlessness and Christianity. But with Republican Sen. David Vitter powering his way to re-election that fall, Fleming had no trouble winning comfortably with 62% of the vote.

In September 2011, Fleming came under fire for comments he made on MSNBC after being asked about a Wall Street Journal report that he had a gross income of some $6.3 million. “The amount that I have to invest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million,” he said. “So by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, $400,000 left over to invest [in his businesses].” MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing responded that having just $400,000 left over after taxes was not exactly a sympathetic position, compared to many people who make just $40,000. Fleming was criticized by liberals in the blogosphere and on cable TV for being insensitive to the plight of workers with much less disposable income. But Fleming was unapologetic for his conservative stance, explaining later on Fox News that higher taxes mean business owners have less money to hire new workers. According to National Journal’s vote ratings, Fleming was the most conservative member of the Louisiana delegation in 2010.

During a vote on a September 2011 continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown, Fleming was one of 48 Republicans who defied the Republican leadership by voting no, believing that the CR did not cut government spending enough. However, Fleming was one of 23 Republicans who changed his vote to support a revised version of the CR two days later, mollified in part by a $100 million offset targeting a government program that gave loan guarantees to a solar energy company that went bankrupt.