One month ago today, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a story on the special election entitled GOP counting on ads, Dems on shoe leather. The article noted that Jean Schmidt was spending a lot of time outside of the district raising huge sums of cash and was relying on television ads for her campaign. By contrast, the story portrayed Hackett as focusing on local events and canvassing. Well, it is indeed true that Hackett is massively out-canvassing Schmidt, but now Schmidt's financial advantage has been entirely wiped out.

Today, Jean Schmidt gave her own campaign $20K. Why? Because, as of last week, her campaign was over $56K in debt. This makes Tim Tagaris's earlier estimation of Hackett's Cash on Hand advantage a severe underestimation. Hackett almost certainly has around $200K more to spend than Schmidt in the final days. Since Schmidt can't go down the PAC well again after blowing their money in less than a month, and since her entire strategy was seemingly based on massively outspending Hackett on TV ads, as we enter the final week of the campaign, the momentum and resource advantage are now decisively in Hackett's favor.

The free media battle is also shifting in Hackett's favor. While over the past month Google News counts ninety-one local stories about Schmidt and only 63 about Hackett, over the past week Hackett has closed that gap to just two: 27 for Hackett, and 29 for Schmidt.

A lot of things are clearly going Hackett's way in this race. If you can't make it into the district to help canvass, his Act Blue page is on the verge of passing 3000 contributers (right now it stands at 2,982) and $150K (right now it stands at 148.3K). The netroots shave done an excellent job helping Paul out in this campaign. Visit his website for info on how you can help.