Council candidate Jeff Syracuse seemed defensive about fair questions

We all say things we regret. Some of us try live up to the folly. Others try and scrub their public comments from sight, so they don't have to stand by their words. It is especially bad when people seeking public office choose not to stand by their words.

Hip Syracuse

Take Jeff Syracuse, who is running for a council seat to represent "Hip Donelson." A few years ago I received an email pondering how Mr. Syracuse could move in a matter of weeks from someone seeking advice on how to organize a neighborhood association to someone who could be invited to a personal meeting with the Mayor as a neighborhood leader.

My initial thought on that email was, "Well, it is an election campaign year and for the first time in 4 years Karl Dean considers neighborhoods important to engage." In fact, in April 2011, Hizzoner launched a series of neighborhood "gatherings" and "steering committees" that often carried a veneer of paternalistic openness to change and philanthropic volunteerism, but that constituted campaign stops orchestrated by the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods. Those meetings ended after Karl Dean was re-elected.

Excuse my jadedness, but Karl Dean's interest in neighborhoods in 2011 seemed opportunistic. The questions I asked Mr. Syracuse are fair ones given the benefits that could accrue to those neighborhood leaders with whom the Mayor's Office identified to network. Mr. Syracuse was reportedly one of those leaders, and now he has moved from private citizen to public figure. No reasonable questions are unfair at this point for a public figure.

So, I raised the issue with him tonight on Twitter. He responded. Then he scrubbed his Twitter stream of his responses. Knowing what I know of the sensitivity of politicos to their public image, I took the liberty of screenshotting some of the exchange (now scrubbed):

Before scrubbing, he conceded that he indeed did inquire about how to form a neighborhood association and that he was invited and did attend one of Karl Dean's campaign luncheons for neighborhood leaders in April 2011. I asked him how then I was "full of baloney" given that he conceded that the facts I tweeted were right, at which point he stopped responding to me altogether.

Point of fact, Mr. Syracuse sent a message to other neighborhood leaders on April 12, 2011 with these comments:

I had a great lunch with Mayor Dean, Billy Fields, and four others who represented their neighborhoods around Nashville.  We met in the Mayor's Office.  Each neighborhood representative spoke about the issues they are dealing with and it was enlightening to recognize the common issues we all face .... It was a pleasure & a privledge to have a seat at this table.  I hope to do it again in the future. [sic]

I don't understand why Mr. Syracuse would now say I was wrong or why he would scrub his Twitter stream of our exchange, other than he himself is now in campaign mode and cannot entertain questions that veer off his campaign's talking points.

His relentless and unapologetic campaigning is a reason I quit an online neighborhoods e-list earlier this year. But at least one very Deanesque mayoral candidate and champion of charter schools endorsed Jeff Syracuse's campaign kick-off event, even if he cannot himself vote for Mr. Syracuse.


UPDATE: the hits just keep coming for Jeff Syracuse. The Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods announces that they have selected him to serve on a panel to train neighborhood leaders. He's got friends in high places.