Four years gone and Karl Dean is now fronting neighborhoods

Karl Dean spent most of his first term evading neighborhood issues. In one of his only community meetings with neighborhoods the message was clear: neighborhood issues are swallowed by his campaign rubrics "good schools" and "public safety." Otherwise, any neighborhood issues were to be considered on a case-by-case basis. The once robust Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods shriveled to insignificance in the past 4 years.

But none of those facts have stopped the re-elect Karl Dean campaign from re-writing history in the last 9 months. Now his PR handlers have practically repackaged him as the neighborhoods Mayor. Here's the snail mail solicitation he is sending out:

This song and dance would have played better in 2007.

It's as if the past 4 years are undone in 9 months. I guess memories contract in public relations.

CM Duane Dominy forwarded that literature and told me that it featured challengers Page Turner and Tanaka Vercher. Now, I don't know Ms. Turner or Ms. Vercher and they may be the most enlightened progressives ever. But I suspect is that if Mayor Karl Dean is going all in on both of them and funding campaign literature featuring him with them, then they are more likely to become his pocket votes for all future pet projects once he sheds this stifling neighborhoods put-on during his second term.

CM Dominy writes:

If one were to read this mailer one might think Mayor Dean was there personally at every meeting or maybe the candidate he is supporting was present, talking with the neighbors, collecting petitions ... sitting in the Traffic and Parking Commission meeting, or following up with the staff overseeing such efforts.” A traffic-calming plan was requested at a meeting called by Councilman Duane Dominy on September 10, 2009. “This request had unanimous support of those in attendance and I can assure you our mayor was not present, nor was the candidate he is supporting at any of these meetings."

Dean-Vercher-Register: the ties that bind

I'm not endorsing CM Dominy, and he did not strike me as member of the small cadre who took risks early on to challenge the Mayor's Office from their council seats. However, I agree with his objections to Karl Dean writing himself into short history of neighborhoods he has generally ignored and benignly neglected outside of promising trickle-down, sales-tax benefits from economic development. Constituents need to keep an eye on challengers who use the Mayor's coattails to get elected. Strings will no doubt be attached. When the Mayor returns to his raggedy old habits that do not account for community concerns outside of wealthy and influential donors, those new CMs will likely bow to the Mayor rather than listen to constituents on the big issues. Nashville needs independent thinkers, not compliant push-overs who simply pave the way for a Mayor to run for Governor one day, leaving Nashville behind with metro-sized problems that CMs cannot solve on their own.