Contenders for the 2025 New Orleans Mayoral election

Brief Look into the top candidates for Mayor of New Orleans

Hello all,

I hope everyone enjoyed Independence Day yesterday, and welcome back to the Louisiana First Standard.

With election season right around the corner, today’s post will highlight the top candidates for the upcoming New Orleans Mayoral election in October 2025.

Unfortunately, there is not a true “Louisiana First” candidate in this election, but we would be remiss not to cover this important election in Louisiana politics.

Without further ado, let’s look at the three top candidates looking to become the next Mayor of New Orleans:

Helena Moreno

At this point in time, New Orleans Councilwoman Helena Moreno appears to be the main frontrunner for this election.

While originally born in Mexico, Helena Moreno first gained relevance locally as a news anchor for media outlet WDSU and later became a member of the state’s House of Representatives in the early 2010s.

Moreno the won her election to an at-large position on the New Orleans City Council in 2017 and then won re-election in 2021.

In December 2024, Helena Moreno announced her candidacy for the New Orleans Mayoral election.

Recent polling shows Moreno holding a sizable lead in the upcoming election— making her the odds-on favorite to become the next Mayor of New Orleans. Her multi-million dollar campaign war chest, broad name recognition, and high favorability ratings among citizens give her a big advantage in the remaining months before the October primary election.

From a “Louisiana First” perspective, the concerning aspect to Moreno’s candidacy is her support for far-left, extremist progressive positions concerning radical environmentalism, soft-on-crime policing, and the fanatical DEI ideology. If she were to win, Moreno would likely become the most liberal mayor in the history of New Orleans. So, her candidacy poses a credible risk to the “Louisiana First” movement.

Oliver Thomas

In March 2025, Councilman Oliver Thomas became the second major candidate to announce a campaign for the 2025 Mayoral election in New Orleans.

Oliver Thomas (“OT”) is a longtime New Orleans politician with a checkered background to say the least. Thomas has held a spot on the New Orleans City Council for five separate terms spanning the 1990s, 2000s, and 2020s.

In 2007, Thomas pleaded guilty to a felony bribery charge after taking a $15k bribery while in office and served a 2 years in prison for this crime. After his prison sentence, OT mounted a successful comeback campaign for New Orleans City Council in 2021 for the District E seat.

Full disclosure, I actually met Oliver Thomas at a Politics with a Punch show a few months ago, and Thomas came off as a moderate Democrat to the mainly conservative audience at that political event.

Based on his policy platform, Oliver Thomas is running less of an ideological, leftist campaign and more of a “good governance” and “quality of life”-focused campaign due to the city’s rough eight year run under Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Of the three major candidates in this election, Oliver Thomas appears to be the least liberal/“Louisiana Last”. While I do not intend endorsing any particular candidate in the New Orleans, it’s a sad observation that the “best” candidate for the New Orleans Mayoral election will likely be a convicted felon who took bribes while in office.

Despite his name recognition, OT does not have the big donor support that Helena Moreno has garnered over the past several months. OT’s criminal conviction, middling polling results, and smaller campaign war chest make him more of a dark horse candidate at this point instead of the frontrunner position that Helena Moreno currently holds.

Royce Duplessis

A late entrant into this election, state senator Royce Duplessis originally declined to run for the New Orleans Mayoral race— as shown in the below press release from six months ago (January 2025).

But last week, senator Duplessis shocked the political landscape when he suddenly announced his campaign to run for the New Orleans Mayoral election this year. With just three months until the October primary election for Mayor, Duplessis’s surprise campaign adds significantly more intrigue to this race .

A trial lawyer by trade, Duplessis has served continuously in the Louisiana state legislature since 2018. He first won a special election to the State House in 2018 and then won another special election in 2022 for the 5th District of the LA State Senate.

For those who don’t know, Royce Duplessis is one of most notorious, “Louisiana Last” members of the state Legislature. His clearly “Louisiana Last” voting record is why the Citizens of a New Louisiana group has rated Duplessis as a 1/10.

Don’t just take my word for it. Here are just some of the most egregious positions that Duplessis has taken in the Louisiana Legislature:

-his push to decriminalize specific forms of prostitution — SB 283, 2024

-his vote against constitutional carry in Louisiana — SB 5, 2024

-his vote supporting biological males competing in women’s sports — SB 4, 2022

Based on his prior voting record, he is likely the biggest opponent to the “Louisiana First” movement in this election, and we should all desire for him to NOT become the next Mayor of New Orleans. The catastrophic damage that he could enact on New Orleans may be irreprepable— even when compared to current Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

MY PREDICTION

With Duplessis’s entrance into the race, I am predicting that there will be a RUN-OFF for the 2025 New Orleans Mayoral election. With multiple major candidates committed to running, I do not anticipate that a single candidate will garner a majority of the vote in the October 2025 primary election. Therefore, we can likely expect a run-off election in November 2025 for the New Orleans Mayoral race.

To close out today’s article, here is a brief video from local media outlet Fox 8 New Orleans discussing the current field of the New Orleans Mayoral election:

Thank you all for reading, and may Christ Jesus bless the state of Louisiana! Only Louisiana First!