Flunkilicious

When last we saw former "progressive" council member Erik Cole, he was having what looked like a celebratory dinner with Hizzoner and facing questions about his "grassroots" efforts to help the Mayor pass a budget. That capped a council track record of carrying the Mayor's water and polishing his apples and running media interference at Dean critics (including comparing, and speciously so, the banal project of building a new convention center with Civil Rights Movement nobility).

"Fealty with love .... Disloyalty with vengeance."

Now Mayor Karl Dean is showing how important unquestioning loyalty is to him by hiring Mr. Cole to run a new office funded by a foundation connected to controversial New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No word on whether Mayor Dean held a formal job search and interviews with multiple candidates, but that is not the MO (including the previous hiring of Mr. Cole's wife to a prominent post in his office).

After Mr. Cole tottled off the public service radar at the beginning of last fall, I let drop my own questions about his leadership of a "grassroots" organization to support the Mayor that seemed primarily funded by the Mayor (Cole has yet to divulge Moving Nashville Forward's donor list). Now that he is back with the administration, and set up to work on future Dean campaign efforts, I believe it is entirely fair to pose questions again: what happened in Moving Nashville Forward that prompted such a lack of transparency on Mr. Cole's part?