Walter Monsour was attending an LSU football game in fall 2000 when he bumped into then-State Rep. Kip Holden, who was glad-handing his way through Tiger Stadium. Monsour was there to watch the game. Holden was pursuing a dream.
Monsour asked how Holden was faring in his campaign for Baton Rouge mayor against incumbent Bobby Simpson. (It was Holden’s second attempt to snatch the keys to City Hall, having lost to Tom Ed McHugh four years earlier.)
“Great!” Holden replied with his signature smile. At 48 years old, his dream of becoming mayor of Baton Rouge was in sight.
“You aren’t going to win,” teased Monsour, who was supporting Simpson.
Unfazed, Holden replied, “Yes I will. And when I do, I am going to make you my chief administrative officer.”
Monsour laughed. “If you win, I will be your CAO.”
They’d known each other for more than a decade. But other than sharing a love for their alma mater, LSU, and law school degrees, they had little in common. Democrat Holden, a leader in Baton Rouge’s black community, was a gregarious, high-maintenance, habitually behind- schedule, passionate visionary with a mind like a perpetual ping-pong game. Republican Monsour was experienced, well-heeled, reserved, highly organized, a measured thinker from the white business establishment. At the time, he was enjoying his business success, spending his days doing little more than honing his scratch golf game and riding the Harley-Davidson “Fat Boy” he had received for his 55th birthday.
Holden lost to Simpson in 2000, and the Tiger Stadium conversation was filed away—but not forgotten.
Four years later Holden, now a state senator, was taking another shot at Simpson, his dream job and history. Simpson’s support had slipped among the white, heavily Republican neighborhoods of South Baton Rouge thanks to unpopular decisions, a perceived aloofness and a temper. The black and blueblood voting blocs combined to make history on Nov. 4, 2004, electing Kip Holden Baton Rouge’s first black mayor-president. A half-century after blacks fought their way from the back of city buses, guess who owned the fleet?
After the election the phone rang at the Monsour home. Jim Bernhard, chairman and CEO of the Shaw Group and one of Holden’s key advisers, asked if Monsour wanted to join Kip’s team. Monsour figured Bernhard meant the transition team for the Holden administration.
Not quite. Monsour was being offered the job as Holden’s chief administrative officer. Holden hadn’t forgotten their LSU chat, and neither had Monsour.
“Why isn’t Kip asking me himself?” Monsour wanted to know.
Because, answered Bernhard, the mayor-elect didn’t want to hear Monsour say no to him. Monsour said he would consider the offer, and a meeting with the mayor-elect was arranged. This can’t be, thought Monsour as he hung up the phone. “I didn’t even vote for Holden.”
But Monsour’s selection made great sense to others. In addition to being an experienced lawyer and businessman of impeccable reputation, he had been there and done that CAO thing. In 1986, with financial Armageddon threatening the city, he had agreed to join the administration of Mayor-President Pat Screen and balance the budget as chief administrative officer.
“Walter was uniquely qualified,” recalls John Spain, executive vice president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and former news director of WBRZ, who routinely dealt with Monsour and Screen.
Most people can’t make the leap from private business to public service, says local attorney Charles Landry. “Walter is the exception.”
His edge, says Tom Sawyer, retired president of the company that owns and operates the Baton Rouge General, is that he understands the nuances of government structures. “He is comfortable in that setting.”
But Monsour wasn’t sure.
Over the next few days, he sought the counsel of his five trusted consiglieri: Spouse Mary Ann, his most trusted confidante; two Baton Rouge-area Catholic priests, the Revs. Cleo Milano and Miles Walsh; Mary Olive Pierson, the legendary Baton Rouge trial attorney and a friend since their days at law school; and Steve Hicks, his closest friend and business associate.
The five were of one mind: Do it.
Monsour was financially independent, so the economic hit most leaders take when they enter public service—the CAO job paid $125,000—would not be a problem. His hesitation centered on a more critical issue: He and Holden had to be in sync. The chemistry had to be there.
As it turned out, that part was a piece of cake.
The two men met over a long breakfast several weeks after the election. For openers, Monsour said if the new sheriff in town was looking for a chief deputy to change things, the job could be an exciting opportunity. But if Holden was looking for someone to help push political agendas, he had the wrong guy. Monsour cut to the chase: “The first time you tell me ‘no’ strictly on political or philosophical grounds, I’m gone.”
Ground rules disposed of, Monsour offered Holden some advice: Check race at the door, because he was going to be mayor-president of all Baton Rouge and the parish, and that, unlike his legislative days, he would be required to take responsibility for every issue facing the city.
Holden didn’t blink. “Fine. I want you to do for me what you did for Pat Screen.” What Monsour had done for the brilliant but troubled former LSU football star during the one year he served as Screen’s CAO was still remembered, with considerable awe, nearly two decades later.
Holden’s agenda would be somewhat different than Screen’s: Build up Baton Rouge by bridging the racial and political divisions. Holden’s and Monsour’s roles in the administrative structure were carefully defined: The mayor would be the chief executive officer, the strategist, final arbiter and public face of the city-parish. As CAO, Monsour would provide logistics and become the behind-the-scenes impresario of the 5,000-employee, quarter-of-a-billion-dollar city-parish operation.
Monsour extended his hand, and the mayor-elect clasped it. It was the beginning of a stunning relationship that would redefine metropolitan Baton Rouge.
The arrangement helped create a perception that the No. 2 guy may actually be No. 1˝ or, on occasion, even higher. Monsour has been crowned “co-mayor” by WJBO morning news/talk show hosts Matt Kennedy and Kevin Meeks, among others, while Holden’s political opponents have referred to Monsour as the “shadow mayor.”
Neither Holden nor Monsour says he is bothered by that, although the latter acknowledges feeling uneasy at times receiving public credit for a team decision. Having no political ambitions, Monsour has worked behind the scenes, emerging onto the media stage only for Metro Council meetings and hurricanes.
In the latest episode, Labor Day’s Hurricane Gustav, Monsour came across as the calm face of Baton Rouge city-parish emergency operations before, during and after the Category 2 storm. “Walter made East Baton Rouge Parish look fantastic,” Kennedy says. “The city seemed even more efficient than the state’s operations. Walter had 80% of the speaking parts on Office of Emergency Planning televised briefings.”
If Monsour appeared comfortable in front of the microphones explaining situations, it was because he was. “This is what I do.”
His previous experience from hurricanes Katrina and Rita also showed. “This was not our first rodeo,” acknowledges Monsour. “We all knew what was going on.”
It was on that wave of public confidence that on Oct. 4 Holden flattened his four opponents, winning 70% of the vote, capturing every precinct in the parish and earning a mandate for four more years.
At the victory party late that evening, a beaming and buoyed Holden thanked his supporters. To his left stood an obviously pleased Monsour, yet his name appeared nowhere on that ballot, even though the result was as much a plebiscite on his previous four years of work as on Holden’s.
Walter George Monsour was born in Shreveport on Dec. 19, 1943, one of two children to Walter and Alice Monsour. His grandparents had immigrated to America from Lebanon. As was the Lebanese custom of the time, his parents’ wedding was an arranged affair, his mother’s family moving from Texas to Shreveport to join his father in the restaurant business. His older sister still lives in Shreveport.
In high school, Walter (never “Walt” or “Wally”) played American Legion baseball and was a cheerleader for the Byrd High School football team. He was making a name for himself even then. Attorney Charles Landry spent summers in Shreveport as a child and remembers, “Walter was famous (among his peers). We younger kids looked up to him.”
A sports rivalry cropped up between Byrd and Jesuit High in New Orleans. The athletic standout at Jesuit at the time was Pat Screen, who quarterbacked the football team, started on the basketball squad and was a stud baseball player. “The chant wasn’t ‘Beat Jesuit,’” recalls Monsour, “it was ‘Beat Screen.’”
Monsour was fascinated with Screen, who was seven months his elder. When Jesuit thumped Byrd in Shreveport his senior year, cheerleader Monsour walked onto the field at the end of the game to make this prep legend’s acquaintance. He learned that Screen also would be attending LSU in the fall. It was the genesis of a tight friendship that would last three decades.
During their undergraduate years, Screen and Monsour ended up in the same fraternity and athletic field—Screen as a Tiger quarterback, Monsour the head cheerleader on the squad of four males and four females.
Monsour remembers vividly a game in 1965 when a powerful North Carolina team came to Tiger Stadium. With LSU’s single-wing offense, Screen took the ball on an end run only to be run down on the line of scrimmage by the Tar Heels’ Chris Hanberger, a logging truck disguised as an All-American linebacker. The hit-and-run stick was so violent Screen’s helmet was wrenched sideways while still on his head.
“Pat was looking out the hole for his ear,” recalls Monsour. Screen staggered upright, spit sod from his mouth and repositioned his helmet. The quarterback looked at his friend, standing on the sideline a few feet away, and mumbled, “Walter, I now see why you became a cheerleader.”
During Monsour’s senior year, he went on a date with Mary Ann Barrow of Waterproof, La. It didn’t impress her that he was head cheerleader, a fairly prestigious position in those days, but she told her mother that she had gone out with the guy she was going to marry.
“Are you in love?” her mother inquired.
“Not yet,” said Mary Ann, “but I know he’s the one.”
He was. Three years later, they were married.
With his political science major, Monsour entered law school, as did Screen and Mary Olive Pierson, who was one of only six female law students at the time. The three would remain close. During summers, Walter worked for the National Cheerleading Association, traveling the country helping conduct cheerleading clinics.
Mary Ann Monsour, with a business degree, took a job teaching school in Ascension Parish.
In 1970, with bar exams given only in New Orleans, Screen, Pierson and Monsour drove to the Crescent City to study for the examination. Screen’s uncle, a Catholic priest, allowed them to study in the quiet of his church rectory. They all passed.
Screen and Monsour joined the law firm of Brown, McKernan, Breaux in 1970, while Pierson went to Shreveport to clerk for a judge. Two years later, the firm’s senior partner, Ossie Brown, ran for district attorney of East Baton Rouge Parish and won. He asked Monsour to be his chief assistant. Screen and Monsour successfully lobbied to get Pierson to the law firm as Monsour’s replacement.
Monsour worked in the prosecutor’s office six years before becoming the city-parish attorney.
It was during that time that Coors Brewing Co., then a regional Rocky Mountain brewery, began marching east and south, opening a distributorship in Shreveport. Monsour teamed up with his cousin to snap it up, and then he moved north. When Coors decided to open a distributorship in Baton Rouge in 1982, the company offered it to Monsour, so he returned to the state capital. He also obtained an interest in the Lake Charles distributorship.
Monsour did well in the beer business. He did even better when, in 1986, he sold it to a Kentucky distributor for a premium price. Monsour won’t reveal the amount, but said it put him on the road to financial security.
Around that same time Screen was seeking re-election as mayor-president. A natural politician whelped on the rough-and-tumble politics of the Irish wards in New Orleans, he carried a take-no-prisoners attitude into office. A person of ideas and great passion, Screen had been elected for the first time in 1980 and, by all accounts, possessed state and national potential. But he also had a dependency on alcohol, which by his second term expanded to drugs.
Following his initial election, Screen checked into a rehab program. It was touch-and-go throughout his two terms. Pierson was his CAO during the first term but did not re-up, opting to return to private practice in early 1985 shortly after Screen was re-elected. Screen turned to his best friend, and Monsour accepted the $60,000-a-year job.
When Monsour went to work in May 1985, a 34-year-old black attorney, a freshly minted Metro Council member, was learning the ropes in the council chamber. His name was Melvin “Kip” Holden.
The economy had soured, and the city was projected to end the fiscal year with a $5 million to $6 million deficit—then a criminal offense under Louisiana law. There was only one place to scrub that sort of money out of a $120 million budget—employees. At the time, some 4,300 employees worked for the city. That meant 25% of them would have to go, so Monsour directed department heads to identify less-crucial jobs, carrying out a significant reduction of the city-parish workforce.
Crucial to the cutbacks was Monsour’s decision to outsource garbage collection to private companies, which meant cutting 430 garbage workers, card-carrying Teamsters who didn’t take kindly to the layoff. Monsour wound up with a 24-hour security detail following death threats.
But he balanced the budget.
After fixing the budget mess, Monsour left the Screen administration to start CitiState Advisors, which dealt with blind pool bond sales. It allowed governmental entities within a state or region of the state to use bond sales proceeds to establish a pool from which they could draw money for market surveys, program administrative fees, feasibility studies, etc. CitiState was up and running, administering programs and conducting surveys. But the IRS disallowed the practice, banning government entities from using bond funds to reimburse companies like CitiState, so the startup was liquidated.
Monsour retained his keen eye for business, and a small manufacturer of disposable medical clothing operating from a garage in Hattiesburg, Miss., caught Monsour’s attention. He invested in the business, and four years later it had grown to a $17 million-a-year success. In 1996, he and his business partner sold it for “a handsome profit.”
It was around this time that Monsour lost his best friend, Pat Screen. The former mayor’s appetites killed him, and his body was found in a New Orleans hotel on Sept. 13, 1994. While no one was stunned that it happened, his death was devastating nonetheless.
“It was the most difficult thing that ever happened to all of us,” says Mary Olive Pierson, who called Screen the best mayor up until Kip Holden and since Woody Dumas.
“It was a very difficult time for me,” acknowledges Monsour, reticent to go into detail on a subject that pains him still. “It affected me to watch him slowly succumb to inner demons, to watch a dear friend unravel.” Pat and Kathy Screen were godparents to two of Monsour’s four sons. Pat Screen’s best friend, law colleague and chief administrator delivered the eulogy at the funeral, telling mourners that Pat was “the most talented, passionate person I ever knew, who, unfortunately, was conflicted.”
From 1997 through 2000, Monsour didn’t do much more than play golf and ride his Harley. “I never had a motorcycle. My parents would not have allowed me to have one.” He even made a trip to the Black Hills of North Dakota for the annual Harley motorcycle rally known as Sturgis Bike Week.
He turned to land development in 2001 and was making good money when, on Nov. 5, 2004, he got the phone call that drew him back into government service.
“I needed Walter,” says Mayor-President Kip Holden today. It’s why he commissioned Jim Bernhard to recruit him. “I could not afford to offer the job to someone who came with training wheels. It was critical I got someone who could run this operation.”
That thinking turned out to be prophetic. The Holden administration was only seven months in office when the most horrific natural disaster in the state’s history came ashore.
Monsour took up residence in the Office of Emergency Preparedness center where he was given command during Katrina and Rita and, perhaps more importantly, after the storm winds left. By order of His Honor, the CAO had the bridge.
Monsour recalls sitting at his desk in the center, exhausted and stressed, like the others who were putting in 24-hour days, when Metro Councilman Mickey Skyring asked if Monsour wanted anything. Skyring was making a run to the store. Yes, the CAO jokingly shouted back, a Grey Goose martini, slightly dirty, two olives.
After Monsour moved back to his regular office, Skyring presented him with a bottle of Grey Goose, which Monsour placed on the credenza behind his desk.
“When you see that seal broken,” he told Skyring, “you will know that I am in my final days here.”
It was during Katrina, most agree, that Monsour made his administrative bones. It also provided him with reasons to remain with the Holden administration. “Had Katrina not hit,” admits Monsour today, “I could have done everything I needed to do in this administration in 18 months. But now we have opportunities.”
An upcoming billion-dollar bond issue will capitalize on those opportunities. If approved it will fund projects that ought to have been funded years ago, says Monsour. There simply has been no way to do them without a revenue stream.
He applauds Holden for putting the bond issue on the same ballot as his name, something conventional political wisdom warns against. It is part of his second-term agenda. “Kip didn’t want it on a ballot a year after he was re-elected and have people say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this?’”
Holden and Monsour are completely comfortable with one another. Holden calls it an “excellent partnership.” Monsour has come to be the mayor’s No. 1 fan. He remains a Republican, but he displays a stack of “Republicans for Holden” stickers on a table near guest chairs.
Which is as it should be, Monsour says. Political parties “don’t make a damn bit of difference,” he says. “It’s all about basic services. City (and parish) government is not about capital punishment, abortion and the 14th Amendment stuff.” It is all about services to the people, which is largely why Holden and he don’t worry about who is upstaging whom.
“I get to do the things I do,” says the chief administrative officer, “because the mayor allows me to. He is keenly aware of what I do and don’t do. There are too many decisions to meet with the mayor on every one. (But) on big-picture issues, the sun won’t set on the day without my getting Kip’s input.”
For his part, Holden says he is “not so stuck on positions that Walter can’t persuade me why his position is correct, (but) no major decision is made where we don’t consult one another.”
Not everyone sees the Holden-Monsour team as a positive. Some members of the Metro Council, most notably within its black contingent, have problems with Holden and the length and roaming room of Monsour’s leash. They have no problem with Monsour personally. Indeed, they give him high ratings. Most pointed on this issue is Metro Councilman Byron Sharper.
While he appreciates Monsour’s integrity and candor, says Sharper, “We didn’t elect Walter Monsour mayor. We elected Kip Holden mayor. Why isn’t the mayor being mayor? I guess a deal was made to bring Walter on to run the city and Kip would be the face of the city.”
Monsour is the de facto mayor, insists Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed, a former rap artist and convict who turned his life around in 2003 and is now running programs to connect with the hardest-to-reach youth in the ’hoods. He says the mayor and Monsour got him fired three years ago from a court program because of a song on one of his 1991 albums, a song that wasn’t even violent.
“Even though Kip has the title (of mayor) and gets to put a picture on the wall,” says Reed, “he doesn’t own the hall.”
“I disagree,” counters attorney Landry. “The mayor maximizes his unique talents, and Walter brings his unique skill set. The mayor is making the final decisions. Originally, I was not a supporter of Holden’s, but I am enamored by these two guys.”
“They have a comfortable understanding,” notes Tom Sawyer. “It is a tribute to Kip that he doesn’t always have to be the voice of the city.”
“The interesting story,” says Lanny Keller, editorial writer for The Advocate, “is not so much how Walter operates alone, but how the two operate together. It is a remarkable relationship. It is one of the ways how Kip Holden has made this city work.”
If there is a criticism about Walter Monsour—and it’s tough to come by—it centers on his occasional impatience and aloofness.
“Because he is confident in his abilities,” says Matt Kennedy, “he can come off arrogant. If you are slow to come to his point of view, he can be impatient.”
“Walter isn’t perfect,” acknowledges friend Mary Olive Pierson. “He doesn’t understand how people can be so hard-headed because of politics or personal agenda. He has a low tolerance for that sort of thing.”
No kidding, implies Monsour. “I deplore incompetence, laziness and political agendas.” In crisis mode, however, his style is to remain cool. “I am calmer in a storm than in a drizzle.”
He also faults himself on a failure, at times, to delegate. He is not a micro-manager, he insists, but it’s more a matter of personal responsibility. “I believe that every department head should have his or her name on the door, but the buck stops with me. My father left me one thing: a good name. The ball never leaves my court. If I want something done, I stay on it until it’s done. We have a big-ass government. So many things that are time-sensitive have to get done.”
That sort of philosophy has him working at any time of the day or night, or any day of the week.
“People believe Walter is quick to make a decision,” notes Landry. “They don’t know him. He is deliberate and researches thoroughly. He is working all the time. Send him an e-mail and you are as likely to get a response at 2:15 a.m. as 2:15 p.m.”
Mary Olive Pierson: “The BlackBerry was Walter’s dream come true.”
He insists he is not a workaholic. Spouse Mary Ann concurs, although they both lament his free time is much less than it was. He uses what leisure time he has watching golf on TV or spending time with his family. Devotion to family runs deep. His wife, four sons, four “daughters”(-in-law) and four grandchildren are on his office screen saver. He dotes on them, say friends. He proudly points to his youngest grandchild, a girl, as “the first female born into the Monsour family in 45 years.”
Religion also looms large in his life. A convert to Catholicism, he is active in parish life. He says he regularly attends daily mass at St. Joseph’s Cathedral. “I am a big believer in providence, not coincidence. I know my moral and ethical compass is centered in the right direction.”
How long will Monsour remain in harness as the mayor’s No. 2 man?
No one seems to know, and certainly no one is saying. Of the 15 people interviewed on and off the record for this story, there were many hedged guesses. The consensus is he won’t finish the second term.
“They were speculating about my tenure six months after I took this job,” counters Monsour. But let’s do the math: Monsour will be 69 at the end of Holden’s second term. And Holden can go for a third term. If he is successful in that effort, Monsour would be 74 at the end of the final term. He gets the picture.
No, he smiles. He won’t be there until he is 74. Maybe not to 69, either.
He has passed up business opportunities and greater income. Urges to run for public office? Not a chance. Mary Ann wouldn’t permit it, he claims.
The most significant indicator may be his résumé. He has never stayed anywhere more than six or seven years. “Except for marriage,” he quickly inserts. (True enough, 39 years and running.) But in the next breath he will say that public service intrigues him.
Sure, it would be nice not to have to attend some of those civic functions where his presence as CAO is demanded, or to have an occasional glass of wine in public (something he won’t engage in now because of appearances; ditto for slipping aboard one of Baton Rouge’s riverboat casinos). But public service has its rewards. “It is an opportunity to do something for the benefit of everyone I know.” That seems to mean a great deal to him.
Perhaps as important is the fact that Walter Monsour seems to be at the top of his game. And there is that bond issue which, if approved on Nov. 4, means all those wonderful projects. Its chances are enhanced by Holden’s sweeping victory and by the Pinnacle-style advertising blitz currently underway. Who would not find it tempting to oversee the enhancement of East Baton Rouge Parish and the city of Baton Rouge to the tune of $1 billion? Perhaps the outcome of the Nov. 4 vote will be the deciding factor.
Until then city watchers have as their only windsock that bottle of Grey Goose on the office credenza. As of this writing, it is still sealed.
Jay Shelledy is director of the Office of Student Media at LSU, and he holds the Fred Jones Greer Jr. Endowed Chair at the Manship School of Mass Communication. He can be reached at [email protected].
