Sporting a blue go well with and thick-rimmed glasses, Oliver Thomas paced the St. Augustine Excessive Faculty health club, making eye contact with college students within the crowd as he mused about how metropolis leaders can uplift Black companies.
The scholars listened intently as he promised to take action as New Orleans’ next mayor.
Then Thomas hit his stride. Shuffling his ft, bending his knees and spreading his arms in dance, he pledged, too, to defend New Orleans from incursions by state and federal leaders.
Mayoral candidate Oliver Thomas attended providers at Fifth African Baptist Church in New Orleans, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025. Thomas and a congregant each jumped in to cool down two fidgety children. (Employees photograph by John McCusker, The Instances-Picayune | NOLA.com)
“I need to be a mayor that if Jeff Landry and Donald Trump don’t perceive what we’re about, I’ll be the one to get of their face and inform them, ‘Don’t make me journey out,’” Thomas mentioned, doing a snippet of a dance popularized by New Orleans artist T99ZY.
The health club filled with Purple Knights cheered.
Thomas, a veteran Metropolis Council member, shines in these moments — these the place he can let free, elicit amusing, present New Orleanians he’s one in all them. His voice usually breaks with emotion from the council dais. He greets individuals with bear hugs and handshakes. It’s how he says he’d govern, by assembly New Orleanians of their properties and on their streets as he brings them alongside on the street to constructing a “metropolis that works for everybody.”
“I need to meet and contact as many individuals as attainable,” he mentioned in an interview.
Keen on monologues about comforting the bothered and the outdated days of New Orleans politics, Thomas, a fixture of the town’s public life for greater than three many years, can come throughout extra like a preacher, or a historian, than a policy-steeped bureaucrat. But he says he’s operating for mayor as a result of he’s sick of presidency providers that don’t deliver. He floats huge targets, like revitalizing the economic system of New Orleans East by selling birding and different ecotourism ventures.
New Orleans Metropolis Councilmember Oliver Thomas talks with members of the press after submitting his qualifying paperwork to run for mayor on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (Employees photograph by Brett Duke, The Instances-Picayune)
20 years in the past, many in New Orleans thought the title of mayor was Thomas’ to lose. Then, in 2007, his political career imploded when he pleaded responsible to federal bribery costs, resigned his Metropolis Council seat and spent three years in federal custody. He returned residence in 2010 to rebuild his life and status, then staged a political comeback in 2021 when voters in District E entrusted him together with his third seat on the council.
This time round, Thomas’ potential to win the mayor’s workplace will activate greater than his status as an accessible everyman. He should convince New Orleanians that he can ship for a metropolis weary of cracked roads, a rickety energy grid and dysfunctional management — that he represents change, regardless that he has spent the longest of any candidate within the race as a public servant. And whereas his council district has forgiven the bribery charge lengthy behind him, which may be a blemish voters citywide received’t abide.
His greatest power could also be that voters know him and consider he’ll hear.
“Listening to our individuals fuels management,” he mentioned. “I need to hear from them. And I need to study from them.”
Redemption arc
One in every of 5 siblings born to a phone operator and a laborer within the Decrease ninth Ward, Thomas, 68, traces his roots to the heyday of New Orleans’ neighborhood-based Black political teams.
He left the town to attend the tiny School of Santa Fe in New Mexico on a basketball scholarship — associates recall his “deadly” left-handed leap shot — earlier than spending just a few years working as an account government for a world journey agency in New Jersey. Thomas returned to New Orleans within the mid-Eighties to take care of his ailing mom, working as an alternative instructor within the metropolis’s public colleges and volunteering on political campaigns.
His dad helped set Thomas up as a volunteer for Ken Carter, New Orleans’ first Black assessor, on Carter’s barrier-busting 1985 marketing campaign. Carter launched Thomas to District B council member Jim Singleton the next 12 months. The chief of the Black Group for Management Growth, Singleton was trying to rent a legislative aide.
Singleton recalled feeling delay by an outsized go well with Thomas wore to their assembly, an indication of his inexperience. However he displayed a sincerity that appeared uncommon for a youngster. “The sorts of garments he wore I couldn’t relate to,” mentioned Singleton, now 92. “However as soon as I acquired to take a seat down and discuss to him, all of that modified.”
He later met Thomas’ dad and mom and left impressed by how they’d raised him. Singleton employed him. (Then, Thomas recalled, Singleton took him go well with procuring.)
In 1994, Thomas received his boss’s outdated District B seat after Singleton claimed an at-large seat on the council. They’d assist type a bloc that usually opposed then-Mayor Marc Morial. When Singleton’s mayoral bid in 2002 sputtered, Thomas received his outdated mentor’s at-large seat.
New Orleans Councilmember Oliver Thomas together with Officer Mike Roussel assist Ruby Lockhart of New Orleans out of a ship after water rose in her home alongside Iroquois St. in New Orleans, Louisiana on Sunday, August 28, 2005.
Hurricane Katrina burnished Thomas’ picture as he lambasted federal officers’ response and soliloquized concerning the struggles of dwelling in a ravaged metropolis. The storm left scars that he nonetheless invokes in public conferences. Ache lingered, too, from private tragedies, together with the demise of his 11-month-old son, Bradley, in a 1991 automobile accident. Thomas was broadly anticipated to run for mayor in 2010, on the finish of then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s tenure.
However his political fortunes turned when a neighborhood enterprise proprietor near Morial, Stan “Pampy” Barré, donned a wire for the FBI, buttonholed Thomas on the Houston airport and acquired Thomas to recount how, years earlier, he had demanded funds from Barré in alternate for serving to him retain a metropolis contract. That dialog shaped the premise of federal costs to which Thomas would plead responsible.
On the time, Thomas mentioned he was ready “to pay the implications for my mistake.” He resigned from the council and spent three years in federal custody. He starred in two performs that plumbed themes of failure, self-discovery and redemption. Now, a pledge that he has paid his dues to society and deserves one other shot at operating the town is baked into his marketing campaign.
“I’ve owned it, I’ve taken accountability, and I’ve realized immeasurably from it,” he mentioned in saying his marketing campaign. He’s promising to guide New Orleans, too, to a “comeback.”
He met his spouse, Jasmine, at Full Gospel Metropolis of Love Baptist Church. The 2 married in 2016. They’ve a son collectively and a daughter from her earlier relationship. Thomas additionally has an grownup daughter.
Closing push
Thomas remembers the interval following his jail time period as probably the most fulfilling of his profession. He mulled classes imparted by Singleton, Carter and Morial about working with individuals of disparate backgrounds and views. Politics gave the impression to be rising extra rancorous, he mentioned. Working for workplace once more appeared a strategy to impart the teachings of his mentors upon the present political class.
That Thomas remained widespread with voters, at the very least within the Decrease ninth Ward and New Orleans East, was confirmed when he received the seat representing District E. The 2021 victory made him the one trendy New Orleans politician to signify three seats on the Metropolis Council.
Oliver Thomas holds coconuts that got to him as Zulu rolls alongside St. Charles Ave. within the CBD on Mardi Gras 2025
To get a way of his recognition, Thomas’ associates say, one wants merely to go in public with him.
“Making an attempt to go seize a fundamental lunch with him, it’s like strolling round with the Pied Piper,” mentioned Clarence Roby, an legal professional and longtime good friend of Thomas. “He is aware of everyone, and everyone is aware of him.”
From his newest council time period, Thomas factors to the razing of the long-abandoned Six Flags web site, which he has touted as a possible financial hub beneath a challenge headed by a childhood good friend, business owner Troy Henry. He has highlighted diminished crime within the East.
As mayor, he would carry extra retail and different companies to New Orleans East. He’d additionally work to additional cut back crime and blight.
Thomas is among the few Metropolis Council members who at instances sided publicly with Mayor LaToya Cantrell. On the similar time, he has blasted Cantrell for failing to work extra collaboratively with the council.
On the peak of his clashes with Morial, Thomas recalled the previous mayor inviting him to lunch to hash out disputes.
“I’ve by no means been to lunch with this mayor,” Thomas mentioned. Cantrell’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Each Thomas and state Sen. Royce Duplessis have been trying to chip away at polling leads held by Helena Moreno, Thomas’ Metropolis Council colleague and the race’s presumptive front-runner. Moreno notched 51% to Thomas’ 16% in the latest publicly obtainable ballot.
“Individuals take a look at (Thomas) because the institution candidate as a result of he’s been round for some time,” mentioned Edward Chervenak, a political scientist who heads the College of New Orleans’ Survey Analysis Middle. “Royce is the brand new child on the block. Helena represents the institution however appears to have completed job presenting herself as a change agent.”
Mending divisions
Thomas’ marketing campaign web site features a prolonged coverage platform, together with proposals to make New Orleans’ police chief an elected place, constructing 10,000 new reasonably priced housing models over eight years and partnering with native banks to supply low-interest loans to entrepreneurs.
Thomas’ title recognition continues to be sturdy, in keeping with polls. His ability as a retail politician shines at occasions the place he can work a crowd or mingle with residents.
On the Fifth African Baptist Church in Central Metropolis on a current Sunday morning, the theme of the morning’s service was “Man up.” That theme dovetailed with Thomas’ populist-tinged pledge to uplift New Orleanians, notably Black ones, who endure decrease incomes and well being outcomes than their peer residents.
Thomas unfolded his 6-foot-6 body from a pew and walked to the pulpit.
Mayoral candidate Oliver Thomas attended providers at Fifth African Baptist Church in New Orleans, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025. He provided remarks in the course of the service. (Employees photograph by John McCusker, The Instances-Picayune | NOLA.com)
“There have at all times been males, Black males, who man up,” Thomas informed parishioners, who murmured alongside in settlement. “But we dwell in a society at the moment the place we’re the one neighborhood the place they need us to be entire with half.”
Just a few hours later, Thomas was on a avenue nook in Treme, consuming ice cream and chatting up passersby. “How are you, son?” Thomas requested a neighborhood blogger who wandered over.
Later, he handed by Renee Lapeyrolerie, a veteran political operative operating Moreno’s marketing campaign. The 2 shook fingers and exchanged pleasantries.
‘Virtually prefer it was once’
As he famous in his remarks at St. Augustine, Thomas is vying to be mayor at a time when many in New Orleans really feel it faces threats from Landry, who has launched a collection of coverage incursions right here, and Trump, who has threatened to impose his will on majority-Democratic cities throughout the nation.
“New Orleans wants a accomplice, not a predator,” he’s fond of claiming on the marketing campaign path.
Thomas’ allies say he’s been under-polling on the race, insisting that he can carve a path to victory on the backs of a silent bloc of supporters who they are saying maintain a deep, years-old loyalty to him. (Thomas has hosted a radio present on WBOK-AM, a station owned partly by Henry, however dropped this system whereas campaigning for mayor.)
Metropolis Councilmember Oliver Thomas takes half within the New Orleans Mayoral City Corridor hosted by Voters Organized to Educate on the VOTE Headquarters in New Orleans, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Photograph by Sophia Germer, The Instances-Picayune)
“I believe on the finish of the day, he’ll make a runoff, and other people will get behind him,” Henry mentioned.
Thomas mentioned he would not pay a lot consideration to polls, focusing as an alternative on the reactions he will get from voters on the road.
“The extent of pleasure and engagement from the neighborhood is sort of prefer it was once,” he mentioned.
