New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno glided through the packed assembly room at Berean Bible Church in Algiers on a recent Friday.
She and other community leaders were honoring participants in a nonprofit program called Heroes of New Orleans that aims to put at-risk teenagers on the path to success.
Several people stopped Moreno for a photo or a hug. One woman asked her about AI and ended the conversation by saying she had been nervous to talk with the mayor.
Moreno smiled and patted her arm.
If anyone should be nervous, it should be the mayor.
During her first six months in office, Moreno has had to grapple with finding enough money for the city to pay its bills, fix broken streetlights and fill gaping potholes. She has had to worry about keeping residents safe and making progress on her other campaign promises.
At the same time, Moreno has had to maintain a delicate balancing act with Baton Rouge Republicans, , who are aggressively injecting themselves into the city’s affairs, and her Democratic constituents, who expect her to strongly defend New Orleans’ interests.
The Democratic mayor and six other local political leaders took the extraordinary step on Tuesday of asking a special prosecutor to drop an Orleans Parish grand jury indictment against Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, in an attempt by the officials to reset relations between the city and state.
The controversies don’t seem to ruffle Moreno, 48.
During several recent interviews over a two-week period, where the mayor allowed The Times-Picayune to shadow her and attend meetings with her senior staff, Moreno was relentlessly optimistic, saying she is focused on avoiding distractions and on bettering the lives of New Orleans residents.
Moreno favors an approachable and inclusive style that draws people in, but she also doesn’t hesitate to say no when necessary.
“Everything in my background prepared me to be in this very seat,” said Moreno, a former WDSU-TV reporter/anchor who spent a total of 15 years in the state House and on the City Council before winning the mayor’s race last year in the primary with 55% of the vote. “I had an understanding of what to do. I know my capability.”
One of those capabilities, she believes, is to approach politics strategically, to minimize mistakes that result from ad hoc or improvised decisions.
“I think through things I’m going to say or I will present,” Moreno said. “I am constantly thinking 20 moves ahead. That’s just how I’m programmed. I’ve got a little chess game in my mind all the time. I try to be very thoughtful in whatever I do, particularly now as leader of the city.”
Landry targets New Orleans
During her initial months as mayor, Moreno had a good working relationship with Landry, who worked collaboratively with city leaders to reduce crime and spiff up the city in advance of the 2025 Super Bowl.
But during the legislative session, Landry and Republican lawmakers at New Orleans by eliminating nine judges, 10 assistant district attorney salaries and the position of Calvin Duncan, the newly elected Orleans Parish clerk of criminal district court. The governor followed that up by eliminating $33 million of spending and infrastructure projects in New Orleans.
In the meantime, Murrill threatened to remove Moreno and other New Orleans officials over a proposed election involving the clerk’s office. by noting in a social media post that a criminal law prohibits intimidating or threatening a public official. “Bottom line,” she said, “I won’t back down.”
Six weeks later, an Orleans Parish grand jury indicted Murrill on 16 counts because of her comments. She and Landry then blasted New Orleans officials. Moreno, knowing she couldn’t win approval, withdrew a request for state authorization to sell $110 million in bonds that she planned to use to avoid budget cuts.
In an attempt to normalize relations, Moreno and the city leaders made the next move by writing special prosecutor Laurie White to ask her to of the attorney general. White complied.
It hasn’t produced an immediate payoff for the city. Responding to the letter, Landry and Murrill continued to express anger at the indictment and vowed to find out whether New Orleans leaders were involved. The mayor and the others have said they weren’t.
and they fed it,” Murrill said.
Landry raised the temperature on Wednesday by saying to allow the state to take greater control over New Orleans’ courts.
Asked in a text if she had orchestrated the letter-writing, Moreno replied, “I’m not talking about any of this anymore. Moving on.”
Robert Collins, professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard, has been closely following the saga.
“I think she has done everything possible to bring the governor back to the table,” Collins said. “She has left the door open; she has gone through intermediaries. But right now, she’s left out in the cold from state assistance and resources.”
Getting her message out
Moreno has had a better time producing regular digital media posts that typically draw about 35,000 views.
Moreno updates her constituents on upcoming issues every Sunday — after a run, in the car on her way to church or from her Uptown home.
“I’m not doing anything scripted or having anyone shoot me or doing a bunch of different takes,” Moreno explained, sitting in the back seat of her city SUV, returning to City Hall. “Really, it’s a one-take type of thing. I’ll just do it and post it, and that’s my message for the day. It’s a good way for people to know what I’m doing.”
Moreno said she films and edits the video herself and provided a quick demonstration on her phone of how she drops photos into the video.
“Because of her experience in television, Helena is very good at talking directly to the camera. She’s controlling her message,” said Lisa Collins, who worked as a producer with Moreno at WDSU-TV and is now a professor of practice in journalism at Loyola University. “More people are getting news and information from social media platforms.”
On a recent Monday, Moreno took a seat at the head of a rectangular table in the middle of her cavernous office on the second floor of City Hall. An aide sat on a sofa nearby that Moreno has taken with her from her legislative apartment at the Pentagon Barracks in Baton Rouge to her council office on the other side of the second floor. In an aside, Moreno called herself “cheap.”
Nine members of her cabinet sat around the table.
Moreno began by noting that the day before marked her six-month anniversary in office.
The cabinet officials cheered, and everyone smiled.
Moreno quickly got down to business. She led a discussion about how the city responded to flooding over the weekend and the continuing problems of the Sewerage & Water Board.
She announced she had canceled plans to travel to Los Angeles the following day to speak at a conference.
“I just don’t want to be stuck someplace, on a plane, if we have another Saturday situation,” she said, referring to the flooding.
She and her senior advisers moved on to plans to have the City Council raise the sanitation fee.
Moreno’s priorities
The sanitation fee and gaining greater control over the embattled S&WB are two of Moreno’s priorities going forward.
Having had to cancel the $110 million bond sale request, the mayor said she will tap into the city’s rainy day fund, a step that officials have been trying to avoid because then-Mayor LaToya Cantrell raided the reserves, leaving her successor with a shortfall.
Moreno will keep pressing to collect money owed to the city and will continue the furlough program that reduces pay for higher-salaried city employees. To save more money, she is postponing various spending projects.
The cabinet officials then took turns giving updates on key issues for the mayor. Laughter frequently punctuated the conversation. Moreno sipped bubbly water from a can of La Croix. A turkey and provolone cheese sandwich from Subway sat uneaten on her desk.
Steve Nelson, who heads the Department of Public Works, said he had just hired three more workers to pave over potholes. Moreno noted that her administration has patched over 15,000 potholes and restored more than 5,000 streetlights.
Joe Giarrusso, the mayor’s chief budget aide, said that the city is now receiving a 3.7% interest rate on money held in reserve bank accounts that was earning no return before. Spending on travel by city employees has dropped by 90%, Giarrusso added.
“From what I’ve observed, this is a mayor who is very decisive, dives into the details, makes a decision, works on executing it and then moves on to the next thing,” said Andy Kopplin, who served as chief of staff to two governors and as the top budget aide to then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
In the coming months, Moreno said in a text, she will continue to press for investment , revamp Canal Street, keep working to improve basic city services and support policing that has the city projecting by year-end to have the lowest number of murders since 1969.
Approach draws supporters, some critics
To triumph last year, Moreno created a biracial coalition that included former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, White progressives, Black pastors and conservative Whites in Uptown and in lakefront neighborhoods who liked her willingness to work with Republicans. U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, and state Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, appeared on stage at her inauguration. Former Vice President Kamala Harris swore her in.
In a poll she paid for, she had a favorable rating of 78% in a survey of 400 voters in New Orleans taken in mid-July by prominent pollster Greg Rigamer.
To be sure, Moreno has her detractors.
An Instagram post on July 11 by Darnell Philipson, a New Orleans resident, showed video of a flooded street and a person piling trash bags outside of a house where she said construction work was taking place without a city permit.
“Look at this,” Philipson said. “Where is her code enforcement?”
Moreno has an uneasy relationship with WBOK-AM, which has a largely Black audience.
She has declined repeated requests to appear on any of its programs.
“I just choose to do media requests and interviews based on who’s going to be fair to putting my information out,” Moreno said and then declined to elaborate on her answer.
One of the owners is Troy Henry, a business owner who butted heads with Moreno last year when she sat on the City Council and opposed his bid for the French Quarter garbage contract. Moreno’s administration has raised concerns this year about Henry’s efforts to develop Bayou Phoenix, the shuttered site of Six Flags in New Orleans East.
Henry said he and his co-owners have no issue with Moreno, but he couldn’t help but poke at her.
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to speak directly with our predominantly African American community,” Henry said.
Moreno appears once a month on Wild Wayne’s show on WYLD-98.5, which also has a mostly African-American audience, and monthly on Newell Normand’s program on WWL-AM.
Oliver Thomas, who served on the City Council with Moreno and finished third in the mayor’s race, was a longtime morning host on WBOK.
Thomas said Moreno hasn’t reached out to him since the election.
“What I’ve heard, people are tired of her blaming agencies and past elected officials,” he said. “I live here, and I want her to do well. I want her to lower my taxes, make my city safe and give us two trash pick-ups a week.”
Moreno had a contentious relationship with Mayor Cantrell during the eight years she served on the City Council.
Now that she's in charge, Moreno said she has prioritized having a close working relationship with the seven council members.
After wrapping up a recent meeting with council member Jason Hughes and council member Aimee McCarron, Moreno said she met three times with Cantrell during their first four years together and none during the second four years.
“She is a very hands-on mayor,” said Hughes, who represents New Orleans East. “She’s deep in the weeds on policy and wanting to understand problems and find solutions. She and I talk multiple times some days, from economic development to lighting issues. She’s been an extraordinary partner. She’s a serious mayor but doesn’t take herself too serious.”
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng also lavishes praise on Moreno for stepping up to work with other regional elected leaders. Last week, the two of them announced an agreement that aims to redevelop an area of West End Park on land in both parishes that has been dormant since Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago destroyed the restaurants there.
“We were kind of at a standstill on how we’d split the revenue” generated from redevelopment, Lee Sheng said. “She just had this view that no one was getting anything from it then. It was a surprise we could work through it so fast in a real common sense way.”
Back in her office, Moreno explained her approach.
“We have to work as a coordinated, collaborative front, the executive branch and the city council, to really deal with the issues the city is facing,” she said. “No one can do it on their own. No one can be that single hero. It has to be a team effort.”
Note: The article has been updated to note that Moreno also appears on the radio programs of Wild Wayne and Newell Normand.