GIANTS AT SAINTS • NOON • CBS 1C
N O L A.C O M
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S u n d ay, O c t O b e r 5, 2025
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ELECTION 2025 NEW ORLEANS MAyOR
“I absolutely love the job I have. It’s a more impactful one.” LOUISIANA ATTORNEy GENERAL LIZ MURRILL
Duplessis
Thomas
Moreno
Mayor’s race a fight to the finish
STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER
As Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill has thrust the state into the center of national debates about abortion, transgender athletes and redistricting.
‘She has not backed down’
Supreme Court case shows Louisiana attorney general’s aggressive, high-profile approach BY TYLER BRIDGES | Staff writer During her 20 months as attorney general, Liz Murrill has driven Louisiana into the center of some of the country’s fiercest political debates. After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, she joined 16 other Republican attorneys general in warning universities not to impose a “tax on free speech” by charging student organizations higher security fees. She is trying to extradite a New York doctor criminally charged with violating Louisiana laws by mailing abortion pills to the state. She sued the Biden administration to block a rule that allows transgender girls to use girls’ bathrooms and participate in sports as girls. And now Murrill, 61, is stepping into perhaps the biggest legal fight in years involving race by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a key part of the decades-old Voting Rights Act. If
successful, the move could force either U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields or U.S. Rep. Troy Carter — both Black Democrats — out of Congress, to be replaced by a Republican. By aggressively pursuing high-profile conservative causes as attorney general, Murrill has been following a playbook established over the previous eight years by her Republican predecessor, Jeff Landry. During that time, Murrill was one of Landry’s top lawyers. Landry’s activist style as attorney general was so popular that he parlayed it into the election as governor in 2023, in the same campaign cycle when Murrill won her race to succeed him. Landry admires her work as attorney general. “She understands the playbook better than me,” he said in an interview.
ä See MURRILL, page 4A
WILD HOG WARFARE
La. farmers, scientists battle invasive species
STAFF PHOTO By AIDAN McCAHILL
Darren Spano, an air force veteran, scans the night for an invasive wild hog using a thermal scope attached to his rifle.
WEATHER HIGH 81 LOW 74 PAGE 8B
BY JAMES FINN | Staff writer In its final days, the tumultuous campaign to be the next mayor of New Orleans hinges on one crucial question: Whether Helena Moreno, who has built a commanding lead against her biggest rivals, will avoid a runoff. New Orleans voters will head to the polls Saturday to choose between Moreno, Royce Duplessis, Oliver Thomas and several lesserknown candidates in the primary to replace the deeply unpopular Mayor LaToya Cantrell. The top two candidates will advance to a general election Nov. 15 — unless any candidate can secure more than half the vote. Moreno, the City Council’s vice president, is the only candidate who appears to have a chance of doing so. Polls have consistently shown her support among likely voters hovering around 50% — good for a 30-point advantage over her two major opponents. From the campaign’s outset, Moreno has maintained her front-runner position as she aims to win more than half of the vote tally in the primary. If she’s successful, she’ll avoid a runoff with whoever finishes second that could bring sharply different political dynamics. While Moreno fights to win it all Saturday, Thomas, a City Council member, and Duplessis, a state senator, are doing all they can to force another round. The battle is being waged through an onslaught of radio and television advertisements, ramped-up get-out-the-vote operations, and an assortment of mailed flyers,
ä See RACE, page 16A
Top jazz talent returns to Central City
New Orleans venue reborn with ambitious roster of artists
BY AIDAN McCAHILL | Staff writer Shortly after the sun’s last rays sink beneath Central Louisiana’s pines, the Rougarou slips into the darkness that follows. He prowls farmland from Pineville to Natchitoches, every step sharpened by a gnawing hunger. Some still claim the nocturnal beast is a fiction of Cajun folklore, but at 6-feet-6, retired Pineville firefighter Shane Kessler is proof of the contrary. It’s nearly 2 a.m., and he’s steadying an AR-15 through the window of his pickup truck. On its tailgate, yellow block letters spell out “Rougarou Hog Control.” Three to four nights a week, from dusk until 2 a.m., Kessler peers with a military grade thermal scanner through fields of corn, soybeans and milo, searching for the white glow of
Will Helena Morena gain enough votes to avoid a runoff?
BY KEITH SPERA | Staff writer
body heat — his next target. “Eleven o’clock,” he mumbles, one cheek full of sunflower seeds, a white beard falling from his face. “It’s lookin’ real piggy.”
Bill Frisell, one of the world’s most acclaimed jazz guitarists, was puzzled. At the conclusion of the first of his two Oct. 1 shows at the rebranded, reengineered and reborn New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market, Frisell strummed one last chord — and produced only silence. His electric guitar had gone dead. “Now I have to fumble around up here,” he announced as the audience awaited his encore, “and figure out what’s going on.” Soon enough, Frisell’s guitar came back to life, and the music resumed. Just as it has at the Jazz & Blues Market. The multimillion-dollar Central City music venue, originally designed and built as a home for the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, has been mostly dark and dormant since 2024.
ä See WILD HOG, page 8A
ä See JAZZ, page 6A
PHOTO PROVIDED By GLEN GENTRy
Glen Gentry, interim research director at the LSU Agcenter, developed an invasive wild hog bait by testing pigs kept at the LSU AgCenter’s Idlewild Experiment Station.
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................4B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 2F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
13TH yEAR, NO. 54