In the post entitled New Mayor brings Fresh Ideas for Nashville [1], the citizens of Nashville were congratulated for bringing "new blood" to the mayor's office.

Turns out that the mayor's bringing in fresh Republican blood [2]:

Legislative director Toby Compton, who will be Dean's liaison to the Metro Council and state legislature. Compton managed Buck Dozier's mayoral campaign this year, then served as a senior adviser to Dean during the runoff campaign.

Left out of this biography in the fair & balanced Tennessean - the paper that would have you believe that fact-checking is something that's up to the reader [3] - are his stints as campaign staffer for Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander [4]. Unconfirmed reports have him working as a former staffer to Marsha Blackburn.

Word around the campfire says that this development is hardly welcomed by the Metro legislative delegation, which currently splits about 80% Democratic, 20% Republican.

Perhaps this is why so many Belle Meade Republicans embraced the notion of a Dean mayoral win. Going into the Dean administration, the official liaison between the mayor's office and Metro Council has strong ties to movement Republicans.

And...

Senior adviser Jim Hester. Hester ran Dean's campaign for mayor. He is a former top aide in Harold Ford Jr.'s 2006 U.S. Senate campaign and former executive director of the Tennessee Democratic Party.

The article fails to mention that Hester was, um, "let go" (read: fired) in August of 2006 from the Ford campaign.

"New blood," indeed.