Attorney General-elect Chris Koster gave the African-American community in St. Louis another reason to believe a better day in state government might be dawning this week when he confirmed that Robert Kenney, age 37, would serve as his chief of staff, overseeing what Koster describes as “a 430-person law firm with 235 attorneys attached to it,” with “ultimate authority in the administration of the office.”
In addition to being an accomplished attorney, Kenney serves as president of the Mound City Bar Association. This is important. Rather than choosing a black executive who lacks roots in the community and can be expected to be compliant, Koster has tabbed for his top job and chief in-office confidante an attorney who already has been selected as the leader among African-American attorneys in the state n and, indeed, a leader among lawyers of any background in St. Louis. Koster’s appointment of a person like Kenney, who enjoys the deepest respect in this community, shows that Koster intends to do what he promised to do in including African Americans in state government at a high level.
We would like to uphold this decision on his part as a model of how a non-black elected official can engage the creative leadership of the African-American community in St. Louis and Missouri. This is how a leader acts when he reaches out to share power, vision and leadership, not merely populate his staff with compliant employees who provide convenient deniability.
We suggest a comparison between what Koster and Missouri can expect from Kenney versus what Mayor Francis G. Slay and St. Louis are getting from the mayor’s most senior African-American staffer, Charles Bryson.
Though Bryson’s father was a respected Teamsters leader, Bryson himself has never been anything other than a functionary for Slay, one of a few African Americans who could be delegated for community work. For Bryson to receive anything like an executive appointment, he had to perform some very dirty work for the mayor at the expense of the tradition of leadership in his own community. Bryson accepted the promotion to director of Public Safety when his predecessor, Sam Simon, already had issued an ultimatum for Fire Chief Sherman George to make a set of contested promotions or face discipline.
And thus Slay promoted an unqualified black man to demote a highly qualified black man, the first African American to lead a department of the St. Louis civil service with a long history of cronyism, nepotism and racism.
Slay has done nothing to show that he respects genuine leadership from the African-American community or that he wants to reach out to the independent intelligence and creativity of his city’s black majority to inform his leadership or decision-making.
There are precedents for St. Louis mayors reaching out to the black community for help in governance, such as A.J. Cervantes and even Vince Schoemehl during his most successful first two terms. In the city, it always makes for good and sensible leadership, because there is a slight black majority and because African Americans are an essential bulwark of the Democratic Party.
Chris Koster shows the way to lead n by embracing other strong leaders and enlisting their commitment and support. We wish and expect success for Koster and Kenney, and we challenge other leaders in this city and state to make similar commitments to inclusion and power sharing.