Al Kissling, the Democrat trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., has changed campaign managers again.
His new manager is Bill Grigaliunas, the 2006 chair of the board of directors for the
He replaces Loveless Johnson III of
“Loveless didn’t quite, I think, come up to everybody’s expectations and decided to leave,” Grigaliunas said.
Johnson lasted only a few weeks. He was hired during the summer to replace then-Manager Roger Flemming when Kissling shook up his staff.
Johnson, a former director in the Clinton U.S. Department of Energy, was touted by Kissling as someone who “has successfully managed four winning congressional campaigns…”
In addition to that bump in the road, Kissling’s campaign reported a deficit earlier this month. Grigaliunas said that’s no longer the case, and the campaign now has about $10,000 to spend on salaries and radio advertisements. Though that’s pennies compared to the money in Pearce’s bank account, it’s better than nothing.
The campaign is also running newspaper ads in the Ruidoso area that were donated by individuals.
And a new group has formed to help Kissling. Ron Nesler, a military veteran who has been actively working to defeat Pearce, has started a new group, Citizens for Change, aimed at accomplishing that goal.
Nesler, who worked for Pearce campaigns twice before switching sides, touts in an e-mail sent to Kissling supporters this weekend that his group will ensure that Pearce gets “payback for lying to war veterans.”
“Pearce truly represents no one other than big oil, the big drug companies and big foreign corporations,” Nesler states in the e-mail. “I am a lifelong Republican and Al Kissling represents my values much better than Stevan Pearce.”
The background image on many of the site’s pages shows Pearce standing beside former Rep. Mark Foley of page-scandal fame. The site is worth checking out.