The Hoosier Pundit is taunting supporters of Nels Ackerson because Brian Howey did not list IN-04 as one of the competitive races.

If Steve Buyer was going to be beaten, it would have been either in 2006 (the high-water year for Congressional Democrats in Indiana) or in 2002, when the Democrats redrew his entire Congressional district the year before with the objective of defeating him.

So, rest easy Rep. Buyer. Nothing to see here. No need to gear up for a campaign in 2008. Just go back to rehabbing that knee or voting against children’s health insurance or drawing up plans to nuke Afghanistan or whatever it is you do with your time. The Hoosier Pundit and Brian Howey say you have nothing to worry about.

I saw a little snippet on WLFI about the Tippecanoe County Democrats’ Jefferson Jackson dinner. It mentioned that Jim Schellinger and Nels Ackerson were among the speakers there. Now, it’s not earth shaking news that these guys would talk at a county Democratic function. What is notable to me is that the news saw fit to include Mr. Ackerson in its reporting. I’m not sure if he gets mentioned if his 1st quarter fund raising had been lackluster.

It looks like Nels Ackerson is for real in his challenge against Steve Buyer. For the campaign period ending September 30, 2007, the Ackerson campaign raised $134,000. According to the campaign, “this figure sets a new Indiana record for individual contributions made to a challenger, Democrat or Republican, in their first reporting period.”

Campaign manager Jim Hurst said, “Contributions have ranged from $5 to $2300, the legal maximum.” Hurst also said, “Some contributors have already given to both the primary and general election campaigns.” The campaign will file its report with the Federal Election Committee before the October 15th deadline, and details will be public after that time.

This number apparently reflects only individual contributions and includes no money from political party organizations or political action committees.

Wanna contribute?

As I’ve noted here before, Nels Ackerson is trying to get the Democratic nomination to challenge Steve Buyer for Indiana’s 4th Congressional seat. I suspect Mr. Ackerson is going to give Mr. Buyer a stiffer challenge than he has gotten in years past. One element of such a race is, inevitably, money. I think some reporting deadlines are either coming or going and we’ll get an early snapshot of this race in the near future. So, I thought it might be interesting to see how the money shook out for Mr. Buyer in the past few races.

For the 2006 race, Buyer raised $744,682 compared to $136,352 raised by David Sanders. From the report, it looks like Buyer got 77% of his money from PACS. Sanders’ race was substantially self-funded.

For the 2004 race, Buyer raised $661,525 of which 70% came from PACS. David Sanders raised about $21,392 which was about 50/50 – self-funded and individual contributions.

For the 2002 race, Buyer raised $945,973 of which 65% came from PACS and 30% was self-funded. Bill Abbott raised only $27,807. The 2002 race was a little unique in that it involved a reorganized district and, in the primary, Buyer had to square off against another incumbent, Brian Kerns.

For the 2000 race, Buyer raised $705,000 and his opponent Gregory Goodnight raised $455,000. And, in 1998, Buyer raised $346,000 and his opponent, David Steele raised $63,657.

So, what does it take to beat an incumbent? Well, in 2006, three Republican incumbents were defeated. In IN-02, Joe Donnelly beat Chris Chocola. Chocola raised $3.2 million compared to Donnelly’s $1.5 million. In IN-08, Brad Ellsworth beat John Hostettler. Ellsworth raised $1.7 million compared to Hostettler’s $586,000. And, in IN-09, Hill raised $1.9 million compared to Mike Sodrel’s $2.7 million. And, just for another data point, in IN-03, where Tom Hayhurst gave Mark Souder a pretty good run, but eventually lost, Hayhurst raised $690,000 compared to Souder’s $622,000.

Money isn’t everything. And, these fund raising numbers don’t paint the whole picture. MoveOn.org helped Donnelly out with an ad blitz against Chocola. The House Republican Campaign Committee provided financial assistance to Souder. And, plenty of other factors contribute besides. But, the fact is that Steve Buyer has not been tested by a Democratic opponent with resources comparable to his. It will be interesting to see whether Mr. Ackerson can get some traction and bring that impressive resume of his to bear against the incumbent from Monticello.

I had the opportunity to go to the Nels Ackerson campaign’s kick off event at Purdue’s Pfendler Hall. Mr. Ackerson chose the site because Prof. Pfendler was apparently his mentor in years past. It was a nice site for a campaign event — with the idea weather, pretty much anyplace would have been good — except that the buses and occasional loud truck that rolled by tended to drown out the speakers.

Ackerson has the endorsements of a couple of Indiana’s biggest Democratic guns – Birch Bayh and Lee Hamilton.

I didn’t take notes and memories are fallible, but I some of the campaign themes that struck me are:

• An intent to be bipartisan — presumably not the Grover Norquist date rape brand of bipartisanship. He acknowledged friends, supporters, and family members in the crowd, one of whom was his Aunt who is in her 90s and is apparently mildly disappointed in his choice of political parties. He made clear, however, he was seeking the support of fair-minded Republicans in the district. While taking questions from the gallery, he was asked about how he was different from his likely opponent, Steve Buyer. Ackerson thought one of the most significant differences was that Buyer was a party-line kind of guy. I’m sure party leaders don’t really like the idea of freshmen legislators with an independent streak, but I suspect that if it means Democratic representation from Indiana’s 4th District, Democratic leadership will tolerate some maverick votes from Mr. Ackerson where his position differs from the party line.
• A recognition that citizens have become or are becoming detached and disillusioned with their government. This might be a standard theme for challengers attempting to motivate potential followers, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Government is (or ought to be) nothing more or less than us. These are just folks who we elect from our midst to represent our interests. When we stop paying attention or stop thinking we can influence our representation, I think our representatives start thinking the same thing and stray from our best interests.
• An interesting observation that our government has a responsibility to protect our freedoms, including our freedom to be free of government interference where it is inappropriate.
• While he did not claim to be the greatest expert on the subject, the fact is that Ackerson spent 3 years living and working in the Middle East and, therefore, has a much better understanding of the region than a lot of other politicians who may spend 2 or 3 days there before coming back and telling everybody what we ought to do over there.

Update The campaign speech received some cursory print coverage. The Journal and Courier has a brief article here, and WLFI has the story here. Not a whole lot in the articles, mainly just mention of Mr. Ackerson’s intent to avoid partisanship.

Nels Ackerson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Steve Buyer to represent Indiana’s Fourth Congressional District will be officially kicking off his campaign at Purdue University on Thursday, September 13 at 1:30 p.m. The event will take place in front of Pfendler Hall in West Lafayette.

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Indiana Barrister has a post about which Blue Indiana commented having to do with Steve Buyer’s advice to Dick Lugar that he should shut up and wait.

According to Buyer, in spite of 4.5 years of evidence to work with, Senators Lugar and Warner should wait for the report of General Petraeus (a report, to be penned by the White House but issued by the General, incidentally) before commenting on the strategy of Iraq. I’ve criticized Sen. Lugar for doing nothing more than talking — his votes usually go the way of the White House on Iraq regardless of what he’s been saying — but, to criticize our Senator for stating the obvious, our current strategy isn’t working, is ridiculous.

Quoth the Buyer:

“The senators need to be patient and close their mouths and listen before they speak out about Iraq,” he said. “They need to stop trying to be generals on the ground. Your job is to listen to the generals.”

Buyer conveniently overlooks the fact that this report is to be written by the White House. Buyer, as you’ll recall, is the military genius who wanted to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Unlike Buyer, his potential challenger for Indiana’s 4th Congressional seat, Nels Ackerson, is not hesitant to take a look at the past 4.5 years and suggest that changes are necessary. It is ridiculous for Buyer to suggest that we need to wait for a report ghost written by the White House before we can figure out that the White House has gotten a tremendous number of things wrong in Iraq.

Nels Ackerson, Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 4th Congressional District has an opinion column in the Journal Review (out of Crawfordsville, I believe.) He criticizes the premise of No Child Left Behind. That policy does not promote education. It merely promotes the indicia of education. In other words, it doesn’t encourage teachers to teach kids to be smart. It encourages them only to produce students who can take a particular test. And, it does so at an expense. There are only so many hours in the day, and so every minute spent teaching to the test is a minute not spent teaching kids what they need to live. (Never mind other problematic aspects of NCLB — unequal and inadequate resources and disparate needs of student populations, for example).

To be sure, this isn’t the only time waster in a teacher’s life. My wife was formerly a teacher, and from her perspective, the non-education obligations imposed on teachers and schools were legion. The bureaucracy was formidable. Teachers are expected to be babysitters, police officers, and social workers as much as educators. Frequently, it seems, there is poor communication between school boards and teachers; leaving a school corporation in bad shape where, perhaps, the teachers and the board members are adequate, but school administration is not.