Empty suit nepotism

It's bad enough that Karl Dean undercut his own stated principle of local government autonomy from state intrusion to support a charter school application. But now it appears that he leans on the influence of family connections that sacrifices that principle rather than vaulting over it to some higher principle about privatized education itself:

Before Mayor Karl Dean made public comments scolding the school board in May over charter schools, a family relative who has ardently supported the controversial Great Hearts Academies application revised the mayor’s prepared remarks.

A series of emails from inside the mayor’s office about Great Hearts Academies shows that Bill DeLoache, a cousin of Dean’s wife, Anne Davis, was a key figure in unveiling Dean’s public support of the charter school application even as concerns began to arise about the proposal.

DeLoache has been involved in the charter school movement since the early 1990s.

Karl Dean actually withheld the requested series of emails from the news media based on a specious defense until journos forced his hand with a second request for just the "sent to" and "received from" information without the content. He then released the emails. That does not pass the smell test of legitimacy for me.

Mayor Dean takes care of his own first. And in Nashville, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, one never goes against the family.