January 09, 2026 02:47 PM UTC

Please Stay Away from Eric Nelson

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• by: Colorado Pols

One of the unsung reasons that Democrats have outperformed Republicans in Colorado is that Democrats, by and large, do a much better job of taking accountability when a fellow Democrat needs to be kept at arm’s length.

This is what happened in 2016, when the Democratic Party took the unusual step of publicly endorsing a candidate in the middle of a Democratic Primary Election. Colorado Democrats decided to back Dominique Jackson in an open State House race in HD-42 when it became apparent that her opponent was a straight-up con man. Journalists including Ernest Luning (then of the Colorado Statesman) and Marshall Zelinger (then with Denver7) dug into the background of then-Aurora School Board member Eric Nelson and found that the bulk of his professional resume was complete nonsense.

Nelson had a bunch of prior criminal cases and convictions that he forgot to mention, but it was what he did discuss that got him in the most trouble. Nelson claimed that he was an Air Force veteran and posed in photos — in uniform — on social media; as it turned out, Nelson had only been an active member of the Air Force for eight weeks. Nelson also claimed to have as many as seven advanced degrees, though Luning and Zelinger found no actual records of him being a student at a legitimate university.

Here’s one of Zelinger’s stories from June 2016 that includes an interview with Nelson in which he says he “doesn’t remember” being allegedly married to two different women at the same time:

Nelson briefly tried running for the legislature again in 2021. But the reason we’re bringing this up now is because Nelson has once again filed to run for HD-42 against incumbent Democratic Rep. Mandy Lindsay (who succeeded Dominique Jackson in 2022).

We don’t know enough about Lindsay to opine on whether or not there are legitimate reasons to challenge her in 2026, but we know enough about Nelson to say — definitively — that he has no business being anywhere near elected office ever again.

Nelson might think that his story is sufficiently lost to time that he can once again try to reinvent himself. If Nelson has indeed turned a corner and is living a more, uh, truthful existence…good for him. But nobody can possibly take him seriously as a candidate for office after the litany of lies he spent years spreading about himself.

If you happen to get a voicemail from Eric Nelson asking you to support his newest campaign for the legislature, our advice is simple: Don’t call him back.