Alabama’s Jones hires chief of staff

U.S. Sen.-elect Doug Jones, D-Ala., has tapped Dana Gresham, a fellow Alabamian who served in the Department of Transportation under President Barack Obama, to become his chief of staff, and former Senate staffer Sonceria Ann Bishop-Berry to advise his transition — a victory for minority groups which had urged Jones to pick black-Americans for key roles. Both Gresham and Bishop-Berry are black.

Gresham, a Georgetown University graduate, spent more than a decade as a House staffer, working as a legislative director for former representative Bud Cramer and as chief of staff to former representative Artur Davis. He moved from that office to the Transportation Department in 2009, spending eight years there as an assistant secretary.

In the Senate, he’ll be the only black chief of staff for a Senate Democrat — a point that the NAACP and other groups made last month when urging Jones to make diverse hires.

“Hiring at least one person of color to your senior staff in Washington would speak loudly, and we ask that you do so among the qualified applicants that you will receive,” 17 groups wrote in the letter.

The news that Jones would tap Gresham was quickly celebrated by some of the activists who’d called for Senate staff diversity.

Bishop-Berry worked with Jones as a staffer for Howell Heflin, Alabama’s last Democratic U.S. senator.

AP/Tampa Bay Times/JAMES BORCHUCK Matthew Spittle (left) hauls reeds Tuesday to master thatcher Colin McGhee for the roof of an Irish pub under construction in Tampa, Fla.