Nels Ackerson’s campaign is falling apart

Believe it or not, there are a few other Congressional Races going on in Indiana…

Let’s take a look at the race involving my friend and Congressman, Steve Buyer.

You may remember that the slick D.C. Trial Lawyer Nels Ackerson who is running against Steve Buyer in the Fourth District had some problems a few weeks ago with attendance and general apathy about his campaign.

Remember the guy who held a press conference in Zionsville attacking Persian Gulf War Veteran Steve Buyer’s record of support for veterans despite the fact that only a half dozen supporters were in attendance and none of them were press?

Well, he continues to have these problems except this time it is much worse.
A “friend” has recently reported to me that Nels held a press conference on his pledge for government accountability that not only did no press show up but no supporters showed up as well.

Darn, that’s twice. Luck like that don’t come all that often Nels.

I was told that Nels held this press conference in the UAW hall across the street from Allison Transmissions and the only people sitting in the 50 empty chairs in the large union hall was him, former Congressman Andy Jacobs who was going to introduce Nels, three members of Nels’ staff, and an obviously embarrassed Nels Ackerson.

(Read more after the leap)
He wasn’t even able to gather any of his union buddies to show up. Needless to say he “canceled” the press conference and left.

We all can understand how it can be difficult to get media to pay attention to a new and unknown carpetbagger candidate but to not be able to get anyone who supports you to show up…weak, very weak.

Sounds to me like Nels is having more problems than what I first thought.

Where was the Indianapolis Star reporter during this press conference you may ask? Well they were in Hendricks County covering a press conference that Congressman Steve Buyer and the Hendricks County Sheriff were holding on energy costs and how they are affecting local government agencies.

This shouldn’t be a shock, since Ackerson has had problems from the beginning. He started off on the wrong foot by breaking an FEC rule that requires that whenever a campaign receives over $5,000 in contributions, something that Nels was able to do on April 25, 2007, the candidate is supposed to submit a personal financial disclosure statement within 30 days. Ackerson did not submit his statement until November 15, 2007 over 200 days past the deadline.

Since then his finance plan has had some major hiccups as the campaign has gone through three separate treasurer regimes and has had to refund contributors donations 15 times since the start of the campaign for accepting donations over the Federal limit or other reporting mistakes. In July he even erroneously reported that he has raised $104,000 in the second quarter while the report that he filed with the FEC a few weeks later proved that he had only raised a little over $87,000.

Overarching all of these issues the simple fact that Buyer has more than a 350% advantage over Nels in cash on hand according the latest FEC filings.
Yeah, I said 350%.
Now that we are in the quarter where Buyer has historically raised the majority of his funds now raises some questions about Nels campaign’s chances.
It seems that Hoosiers are certainly not enamored with Ackerson because over 52% of his contributions have come from outside of the state and 82% have come from outside of the Fourth District. It is not only Hoosiers that are not contributing to Nels but he is not even getting support from national groups like the national labor unions, DCCC, the DNC, or even the Blue Dog PAC who another source reports that he is calling almost every other day looking for money.
This along with the “revolving door of staff” proves that this campaign is falling apart.
Side note:
I saw a bumper sticker on a car for Nels the other day. It was next to a Hillary sticker. Me, being all proud of my McCain/Buyer signage, pulled up and asked the teen aged driver if he was going to vote for Nels.

His response?

“Who’s Nels?”

Priceless. Pass out bumper stickers to kids, they’ll put them on their cars, and opps! forget who you actually are.