A Requiem For A Promising Political Career

As reported first in the Indianapolis Business Journal last week, and now repeated in the Ryerson Rag former 7th District Congressional Candidate Eric Dickerson declared personal bankruptcy. Citing three businesses including the Buick dealership, a Maggie Moo’s ice cream store in Circle Centre Mall, and Westfield Collision Center all of which have since closed.

The Buick dealership closed in the midst of Eric’s 2006 Congressional campaign. An ill-timed lawsuit by Fifth-Third Bank against the dealership just as it was being sold to Ed Martin’s group of dealerships did not help the overall situation.

On the ice cream shop, Eric told me the problem stems from the Simons tripling his rent for the mall space, combined with increasing overhead costs for personnel partially due to the minimum wage hike passed in the “First 100 Days” of this Congress. The rent for about 400 square feet on the third floor would be in excess of $10,000 per month. That’s a lot of $5 scoops of ice cream to generate that kind of revenue, never mind the overhead and costs of goods sold.

It’s very unfortunate it came to this. This pretty much ends Eric Dickerson’s hopes for a political career. Eric’s name kept being bantered about in the early days of 2007 as a possible Mayoral candidate prior to the emergence of Greg Ballard, and after the death of Julia Carson his name popped up on the radar again as a candidate for the Special Election.

I met Eric for the first time in June 2006 as his fall campaign was just getting geared up. Eric was very energetic and was on the go from morning into the evening as the campaign rolled on into November. I met several very interesting people that worked in the campaign and amazingly enough our little rag-tag group operating with little party support and a shoe-string campaign fund still managed to make it an 8 point margin in a very blue year. Ellen, Sally, Darla, Ernie, Mike B., Rick, Richard, among a few others helped make it happen, and most of us are still friends to some degree. Some of us continued on to remain active in the GOP and helped bring the GOP back to the Mayor’s office and the City-County Council.

(cross-posted to DFB)