On November 17, 2020, Cedric Richmond announced he would leave Congress in January 2021 to serve as Senior Advisor to the President and director of the Office of Public Liaison.
The position: Provides coordination between the White House and organizations, coalitions and other public groups.
Cedric Levan Richmond was born in New Orleans in 1973 and raised in New Orleans East, where he attended public schools.
His father died when he was seven years old.
His mother was a public school teacher and small business owner.
Richmond graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Morehouse College. While at Morehouse, Richmond played college baseball as a pitcher for the Morehouse Maroon Tigers in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Richmond received a Juris Doctor from Tulane School of Law.
He also completed an executive program at Harvard University‘s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
While at Morehouse, Richmond played college baseball as a pitcher for the Morehouse Maroon Tigers in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Richmond was elected and served as the Louisiana State Representative for the 101st district (Orleans Parish) from 2000 to 2011.
He was elected shortly after his 27th birthday and was one of the youngest legislators ever to serve in Louisiana when he took office.
He served as the Chairman of the Committee on Judiciary and a member of the Ways and Means, House Executive, and Legislative Audit Advisory committees.
in 2008, the Louisiana Supreme Court suspended Richmond’s law license for six months in a 5–2 decision. It found that he had falsified a sworn statement claiming more than two years of residency in New Orleans’s “D” district in order to be eligible for the district’s city council seat.
In 2010, Richmond was elected to the US House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 2nd congressional district for the first time. He took office in 2011. He was reelected in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020.
In 2014, Richmond defended his Republican colleague Vance McAllister, who had become embroiled in an alleged adultery scandal. It was a rare across-the-aisle gesture. Richmond said that he associated the controversy around McAllister with “gotcha moments” in which the “two parties in this country have gone overboard…and taken joy in the pain of their supposed opponents.”
Richmond was one of a few Democrats who voted to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. He is the fifth-biggest recipient of money from fossil fuel donors among House Democrats.
The League of Conservation Voters gave him one of the lowest ratings for any Democrat in Congress.
Richmond has been active in the Congressional Black Caucus, made up of African-American legislators who work together to have their views heard. On November 30, 2016, he was elected chair of the caucus for the 115th United States Congress.
On December 18, 2019, Richmond voted to impeach President Donald Trump.
in 2020, Richmond’s campaign received almost $113,000 from the oil and gas sector, which donated more than any other sector to his campaign.
.