Celebrating Friendship: Charles Valier’s Remembrance of Former Missouri Governor and Former U.S. Senator Kit Bond

32 year-old Missouri governor Kit Bond, 1973.

By Charles Valier

Charlie relates: In 1971, while in my third term in the State legislature, I was retained by Missouri’s 31 year-old State Auditor Kit Bond to help prepare him to run an audacious campaign for governor. Both of us were progressive Republicans who broke new ground in solidly Democratic and conservative Missouri. It was an exhilarating and halcyon time in my life and his. We were so young our enemies referred to us as the ‘kiddie korps.’ Bond’s recent death from pneumonia brought a half-century of our collaboration to an end. I hope the following piece will capture the spirit of that time.

Christopher S. “Kit” Bond

Kit Bond hated “split infinitives.” He loved our state, its people – pronounced “Missourah,” betraying his Audrain County roots. His record of public service has been extolled in the media after his recent death. I hope to explore the man who made such an impact, who and what he was, as a person.

In late 1971, while State Auditor, and I was serving in the Legislature, he asked me to help prepare him to run for governor. For five months I researched and dissected the issues. He read and retained two notebooks full of memos. We met weekly and discussed my current work product. What I learned was he had a brilliant mind and retained everything. He would only take on the challenge if he was prepared. At the end of the campaign in October we issued five position papers, outlining his program as governor. Simultaneously, he delivered a weekly five-minute address on paid television. The last one was the most telling, “The Spoils System.” He outlined the abuses of a patronage system that had reduced state government to a personal employment agency for office holder’s friends and supporters, often requiring no work in return – “no show” jobs. Why should a cousin of St. Louis mobster Paul Leisure be carried on the payroll of the Department of Revenue without showing up? Not only would he abolish most of these sinecures, but he supported open accountability in government — open meetings, records, public disclosure of all campaign contributions, and ethics reform.

Elected, Bond went to work. Willy, the long-serving office messenger commented, “You all sure are a bunch of hard working mother-f.’s.” Bond’s first challenge was a letter from the Missouri commissioners of the Bi-State Development Agency reporting that the agency would default on its bonds and could no longer provide comprehensive mass transit service to St. Louis. Meeting with Mayor Poelker, County Supervisor Roos, and local legislators, a plan was hammered out to avert the crisis. It was accomplished with no fanfare, and it still works. Presented with a problem he worked collegially to solve it, his trademark. Key to the plan was a dedicated sales tax in St. Louis. Immediately afterwards, he turned himself to tackling the Legislature and reorganization of state government. As Kit remarked at the time, we were “busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

Kit did more for the arts in Missouri than any governor, before or after: state funds to build the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden, acquisition and renovation of the historic Wainwright Building, designed by Sullivan and Adler, constructed in 1895, one of the earliest expressions of the modern skyscraper, and a year and a half public subscription campaign to encourage Missourians to rescue George Caleb Bingham’s 112 preliminary drawings. His study of art history at Princeton had made him an early collector of engravings of Bingham’s great paintings. Over 100,000 Missourians helped in raising two million dollars. As he said afterward, “We were too young to know it could not be done.”

Bond appointed the first black president of the St. Louis Police Board, Theodore D. McNeal, the first black senator in Missouri and a Democrat. During his second term, every Missouri board and commission had, at his initiative, a woman member.

Much of what Bond accomplished has been widely lauded. Unnoticed, he also stood up to bullies. When the “Sunshine Law” was passed, the publisher of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat telephoned him and demanded the bill be vetoed due to an offending amendment. If not, he threatened 30 days bad news. Bond signed the bill anyway, received the 30-day punishment and never complained.

When the St. Louis Police Board implemented a merit-based promotion system, the same publisher launched a campaign in retaliation to discredit the Board, including me, for not promoting his crony for police chief. Bond stood firmly by that decision. “The Police Board has my confidence.”

Two undisclosed actions by Bond show his character. While serving in the Senate, his childhood friend and first chief of staff in the governor’s office, Alan Woods, died quite young of cancer. He and Donald Rumsfeld organized a campaign of friends to raise funds to send his two daughters to college, then under the age of 3. More than 25 years later both have graduated.

In 1976, Kit was defeated for re-election in a narrow race. I was with him in the Mansion election night. The outcome was then uncertain. He delegated me to ascertain the outstanding votes. When I returned to the Mansion, downcast, he read my face and said, “Don’t worry I don’t kill the messenger!” While he was speaking of the ancient battle at Thermopylai, he was telling me that he would accept it graciously and with dignity. He never questioned the 13,050 vote spread, nor the judge who kept the polls open late in St. Louis City. In victory in 1980, when he won governorship once again, he acknowledged with humility his opponent’s position. “I know from my own experience how hard it is to lose an important election.” That kind of dignity will not be seen in Missouri for years to come.

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