3rd District Blues

As Nash let developers run roughshod, he grew apart from the people working to improve their neighborhoods. Ronald Heldstab, president of the Lykins Neighborhood Association, tells me that he's "very disappointed" with Nash.

Heldstab says he supported Nash early in his career, only to watch the councilman become less and less engaged. "He just fell apart," Heldstab says. "I felt we got not very good representation toward the end."

Nash, the chairman of the board of People to People International, a kind of foreign exchange for grown-ups, appears to be grooming for a career as a diplomat. "I think he's decided to move on to bigger and better things," Heldstab says, expressing a common view among those who pay attention to City Hall.

I don't profess to know all that Nash went through as a councilman. His terms coincided with the reign of a mayor, Kay Barnes, who punished anyone who wasn't drinking eagerly from the same bucket of Kool-Aid. And dealing with the venality of some inner-city clergymen and other grant hustlers would wear on anybody.

But it has been sad to watch Nash sleepwalk through his second term.

Of course, next to his 3rd District colleague, Nash looks like a statesman.

Tamara Copple, the president of the Independence Plaza Neighborhood, tells me that Nash pushed through a request for a water playground at 10th Street and Agnes. It opens in May.

But McFadden-Weaver? "I never got a phone call from her," Copple says.