Meet the people in Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker’s ‘kitchen cabinet’

A preternatural politician, Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker talks to a lot of people. But for big decisions, she usually leans on a small circle of advisers before making a call.

Some members of Parker’s inner circle became well-known over the course of her historic campaign to become the city’s first female mayor. The two architects of her campaign, Aren Platt and Sinceré Harris, for instance, are both slated to become deputy mayors in her administration.

Parker’s relationship with such labor leaders as Ryan Boyer, who leads the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, and Mungu Sanchez, deputy political director of the Eastern Atlantic States Council of Carpenters, also came into public view as unions rallied behind her.

But Parker worked intensely during the campaign with a trio of informal advisers who have mostly flown under the radar since her history-making victory.

They are Tonyelle Cook-Artis, her best friend and ex-chief of staff; Obra S. Kernodle IV, a veteran of Mayor Michael A. Nutter and Gov. Tom Wolf’s administrations; and William F. Dunbar Sr., who has worked for or advised ex-U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, and Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Next year, Cook-Artis is expected to join the administration in a senior advisory role. The two others plan to keep their day jobs — Dunbar as a lobbyist whose biggest client is Comcast, and Kernodle, who works in government affairs for American Airlines — but continue to advise Parker informally.

Here’s what you need to know about the three members of Parker’s “kitchen cabinet” who worked behind the scenes to help guide her campaign:

From Harrisburg to the Delaware River Port Authority, from the 50th Ward to the mayor’s office next year, Cook-Artis has gone almost everywhere Parker has gone.

She even moved in across the street from Parker’s home in East Mount Airy.

The pair are best friends, and during Parker’s mayoral run, Cook-Artis was the “spiritual center of the campaign,” Platt said.

Raised by a single mother, Cook-Artis, 49, got involved in politics while at Germantown-Lankenau Motivation High School as a voter registration volunteer. The first campaign she worked on was a reelection bid by then-State Rep. Gordon Linton, who went on to serve in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

After a stint at the University of Minnesota, she worked in the office of Linton’s successor in Harrisburg, LeAnna Washington, during the mid-1990s. Around that time, she got to know Parker, who was working in the office of City Councilmember Marian Tasco.

Tasco encouraged Cook-Artis to return to school at her alma mater: Bennett College, a historically Black women’s college in Greensboro, N.C. She got involved in politics in North Carolina, and met her mentor, Alma Adams, who is now a member of Congress.

She came back to Philadelphia in 2002 with her husband and son, and started working in Tasco’s office. When Parker won a seat in the State House in 2005, Cook-Artis became her chief of staff, a job she held for the decade that Parker was in Harrisburg.

After Parker resigned to run for Council, Cook-Artis won the special election to replace her in the State House. But she lost the next regular election to progressive insurgent Chris Rabb.

The seat is in the heart of the territory of the Northwest Coalition, the Black political organization that Tasco, Parker, and Cook-Artis all hail from. Rabb’s win sent shockwaves through Philly politics and upended Cook-Artis’ career, which up till then was on the staffer-to-elected official trajectory so common in Philly’s political establishment.

“It was definitely a change to my plans because I love to serve, I love working with people, I love connecting residents to opportunities, and working on quality-of-life issues,” Cook-Artis said.

After the loss, she committed to working behind the scenes “to help being the engine to make things go.”

She worked briefly in Council President Darrell L. Clarke’s office and then took a job six years ago with the Delaware River Port Authority. She is now the director of government relations for the DRPA. (Parker currently chairs the DRPA board.)

She learned about transportation policy while at the DRPA, but remains the most passionate about “children and youth and seniors.”

Cook-Artis is the Democratic vice chair of the 50th Ward, which is chaired by Parker and was previously led by Tasco.

She said she sees her role in Parker’s world as “giving sound advice on how we should do things” and as someone who can comfort Parker in difficult times.

“She is an individual who, before I came on the scene, she knew what she wanted, and always was able to articulate what she wants,” Cook-Artis said of Parker. “I probably was, throughout her life someone, just to bounce an idea off of or have a conversation.”

Dunbar describes himself as scrappy and has a knack for turning chance encounters into important relationships. Next year, he’ll be a confidant of the Council president, mayor, and governor — despite all three coming from different political networks.

He first met Parker when he was in college and she, as a state representative, visited Lincoln University, her alma mater, to speak to political science students.

“She was a star to the folks at Lincoln then,” he said. “Cherelle is the big sister. She sometimes call me the big little brother. I’m very, very protective of Cherelle.”

In 2008, Kenyatta Johnson, who is poised to become Council president next week, won a State House seat, making him one of the first Philadelphia elected officials who was about Dunbar’s age. Dunbar had not met Johnson, but he cut out an article about his victory and kept it in his wallet “because he was the first young person that I saw doing the life work that I wanted to do,” he said.

“At the time I was going to church in South Philly,” Dunbar said. “Lo and behold, Kenyatta came to church and literally sat right next to me in the pew. ... I took it out and showed him. Kenyatta and I have been close ever since then.”

A couple years ago, Dunbar met Shapiro through his mentor, Pastor Marshall Mitchell of Salem Baptist Church in Abington. He quickly became an informal adviser to Shapiro’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign and helped with fundraising.

“Relationship building is key to all of it,” he said. “Connecting the right people for the right opportunity at the right time ― I have an innate ability to be able to do that.”

Dunbar, who goes by Will, lives with his wife in Port Richmond, and has three sons, two of whom go to school with Parker’s son.

He grew up in Overbrook Park and was raised by a single mother who worked as a Philadelphia police officer and voted religiously.

Dunbar attended public schools, including Bartram Motivation for high school. At Lincoln, he was elected student government president, a post once held by Parker.

After school, Dunbar interned with the Congressional Black Caucus and badgered Fattah’s staff until he was afforded 10 minutes to pitch the congressman on why he should be selected as an intern in his office. The conversation lasted 45 minutes and ended with a fulltime job offer.

Dunbar rose to become deputy chief of staff and worked on Fattah’s unsuccessful 2007 mayoral campaign.

After the loss, Dunbar became a staffer for Democratic State Rep. Tony Payton before running for a seat himself, losing to Republican State Rep. John Taylor in 2012.

He enrolled in the master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, and then struck out on his own as a consultant.

His business grew over the last decade, and about a year ago he was hired by Comcast. The Philly-based cable behemoth was looking to redefine its relationship with its hometown city government.

“It was all City Council, building relationships, strengthening the relationships,” Dunbar said.

Comcast is now promoting Dunbar and his firm to be its lead lobbyist for local government relations across the nation.

Dunbar worked as an unpaid adviser for Parker during the campaign. His most high-profile contribution to her campaign was insistence on emphasizing her personal story, from growing up in a household that needed public assistance to being a single mother.

“I wanted to make sure Cherelle’s voice remained authentically hers,” he said.

Dunbar said he “fought tooth and nail” to ensure the campaign aired an ad featuring Parker and her son.

“I always would come back to that we need to continue to define Cherelle as the authentic Black woman working mom,” he said. “Cherelle is able to live with that everyday, so I knew and believed that the message would always resonate more, in particular with Black women, who obviously are the No. 1 voting bloc in our city.”

Kernodle didn’t need to rely on chance encounters to break into the local political scene. He comes from Philly politics royalty.

Kernodle grew up down the street from the late U.S. Rep. Bill Gray in Mount Airy. He calls Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. “uncle” because Jones has known Kernodle since he was a baby. His father served in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and was close with former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr., former Council members John C. Anderson and Angel Ortiz, and countless other Philly elected officials.

But Kernodle, 45, has become an important behind-scenes-player in his own right thanks to a streak of picking the right horse early and helping to win the race. He signed up for Wolf and Parker’s campaigns long before either of their wins seemed like sure things.

Kernodle is something of a prodigal son. After graduating from Roman Catholic High School, he majored in education at Florida A&M University and hoped to become a college athletic director. He was working at the Germantown YMCA when his father pushed him to take a job in Ortiz’s office — “your Uncle Angel” — that paid $20,000 per year more.

After Ortiz lost reelection, Kernodle worked in the office of longtime Register of Wills Ron Donatucci, who went to high school with his father.

He had met Parker when he was a teenager, before he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I’ve seen her from a staffer,” he said. “When people call because the tree fell down, she’s done that.”

Kernodle worked on her first campaign for the State House in 2005. It was a major proving ground for both of them.

Although Parker’s win was largely teed up by the Northwest Coalition’s dominance in that area, she faced competition and had to avoid an upset in her first run. He remembers knocking on doors with her in Mount Airy, where most houses are set back from the street and require going up steps.

“She was mad because it was hot,” he said. “Even though people think she had the seat, we had to work it,” he said.

Kernodle continued to learn the ropes working on local and state campaigns and in 2012 he was the Southeast Pennsylvania political director for President Barack Obama’s reelection.

He worked in Nutter’s administration before leaving City Hall to help Wolf’s underdog campaign in the 2014 election and serving in his administration.

After stints at a couple state-affiliated agencies, he joined American Airlines in a job that involves state and local lobbying related to the Philadelphia, Newark, New York, and Boston airports — and will involve working with Parker’s administration next year. Kernodle said he doesn’t expect any special favors if, for instance, the airline is at odds with the Service Employees International Union, which represents workers at the airport and backed Parker in the mayor’s race.

“She is a friend of labor, and I’m in a city that is a friend of labor, so there is going to be some disagreements, and she’s not always going to be on my side probably,” said Kernodle, who lives in East Oak Lane with his fiancé and has two sons. “She might give me more of a smile when she tells me, ‘No,’ but it’s still going to be a no.”

Kernodle was transitioning away from electoral politics when Parker called about running for mayor, but he made an exception “because I’ve known her and been in battles with her.” He was instrumental in convincing Harris to leave a job at the White House to become Parker’s campaign manager, and Parker has credited him with guiding her through the early days of the campaign.

Kernodle’s father helped elect Goode, the city’s first Black mayor, and he said he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to contribute to history in his own right.

“This is something that I can tell my kids — that I got the first female mayor elected,” he said. “Hopefully my kids will be proud.”

Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Tonyelle Cook-Artis’ age.