The new congressman from Louisana’s 2nd District is Cedric Richmond, a Democrat who reclaimed the seat for his party in 2010 after it was held for one term by Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao. Read More

The new congressman from Louisana’s 2nd District is Cedric Richmond, a Democrat who reclaimed the seat for his party in 2010 after it was held for one term by Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao.

Richmond grew up in eastern New Orleans. His father died when he was 7 years old, and he was raised by his mother, a public school teacher. In his youth, life revolved around an urban park where he loved to play sports and later, while in high school, coached teams of younger boys. He graduated from Atlanta’s Morehouse College, the nation’s only all-male historically black college, and returned to his hometown to earn a law degree from Tulane University.

In 2000, Richmond was elected to the state House of Representatives at age 26, becoming the youngest lawmaker in Baton Rouge. He pushed initiatives such as a redevelopment tax credit for weather-damaged areas, funding for playgrounds, and a ban on assault weapons. He also came out strongly against a proposed legislative pay raise in 2008. Richmond ran for New Orleans City Council in 2005, but was ejected from the race for falsifying his qualifying papers when it was determined in court that he didn’t meet the residency requirement to represent the district as he had attested. His law license was later briefly suspended as a result. Despite the controversy, Richmond was re-elected to the legislature in 2007.

Dismayed with New Orleans’ slow recovery from Katrina, he decided to run for Congress in 2008. He also made an issue of the district’s scandal-plagued incumbent, Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat who had been stripped of his committee assignments after being indicted on federal corruption charges. Richmond was one of six Democrats who filed to challenge the incumbent, but the divided field split the anti-Jefferson vote. Finishing third, Richmond failed to qualify for the runoff, which Jefferson won. Cao then eked out a narrow general-election victory over Jefferson, who was subsequently sentenced to 13 years in jail for bribery.

In his two years in office, Cao tried to hold onto the seat by establishing one of the most independent voting records among House Republicans. While he stuck with his party in opposing President Obama’s economic stimulus bill and a measure to limit carbon emissions, he was the lone Republican to join Democrats in supporting the president’s health care legislation in 2009. But when the midterm election rolled around, Cao was viewed as extremely vulnerable given the heavily Democratic makeup of the district.

In the August 2010 primary, Richmond beat three other Democrats, taking 60% of the vote. He garnered two-thirds of the ballots cast in heavily black precincts as well as nearly half of those in heavily white areas. On the campaign trail, he reminded voters of Cao’s votes against the $787 billion stimulus and the final version of the health care bill in 2010. His central message was that he would be a more dependable supporter of Obama’s agenda than Cao, and he was bolstered in September by a public endorsement from Obama, who called him “a leader on hurricane recovery and a fighter for the people of New Orleans.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put Richmond in its “Red to Blue” program, enabling him to tap more campaign funds to catch up to Cao.

Richmond, however, had several problems of his own. In addition to the fallout from his 2005 City Council filing offense, a political group called Louisiana Truth PAC launched a website that attacked him on several fronts during the primary, including a misdemeanor charge stemming from his involvement in a 2007 bar fight. Richmond’s response was that he was only trying to defend himself in the fight. Still, Richmond won easily, 65% to 33%.