 Known as "Honest Bill from Olive Hill", he represented Kentucky's Ninth District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1923, resigning to become the state's 41st governor.Discouraged by an early defeat for a seat in the state legislature, Fields took a job at a grocery store in Ashland, Kentucky that allowed him to travel the state and meet many people in his congressional district.In 1911, he became the first Democrat elected to Congress from the Ninth District in two decades.