“Artie Pacheco is on a whistle-stop tour to be elected the next chief executive of the Nasdaq Stock Market,” writes Kate Kelly in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“Forget, for the moment, that the job isn’t a popularity contest, or that Mr. Pacheco — while well-known within Wall Street — is nowhere to be found on the list of candidates being considered for the job, which will be vacated by current Nasdaq CEO Hardwick Simmons this year.”

“None of that has kept Mr. Pacheco, a 55-year-old trader at securities firm Bear Stearns Cos., from pressing on with a congressional-style campaign for the post.”

“He has spent the past month barnstorming trading desks, gathering endorsements from fellow traders and tracking a popularity poll on a trading Web site that currently has him a leading contender for the job.”

” ‘I can save Nasdaq,’ he says. ‘I know that. I think most of my peers know that.'”

“Unfortunately for him, Nasdaq’s board and recruiters apparently don’t. While Nasdaq officials say they’re aware of Mr. Pacheco’s efforts, people inside the company say he isn’t under consideration for the CEO job — a fact that frustrates the trader.”

‘They haven’t even heard my story,’ Mr. Pacheco says. ‘If they don’t listen, it’s a great disservice to their investors'” He says he is planning to speak with another board member this week.”

“According to people familiar with the situation, candidates being considered by Nasdaq’s search committee include Rick Ketchum, Nasdaq’s current president; Matt Andresen, head of trading at Alliance Capital’s Sanford Bernstein unit; Robert McCann, former head of research at Merrill Lynch & Co.; Robert Greifeld, an executive at SunGard Data Systems Inc.; and John Cecil, former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., where he now serves as a senior adviser.”

“A seasoned Nasdaq-stock trader, Mr. Pacheco is campaigning, in part, on behalf of his peers. Like many traders across the country, Mr. Pacheco says Nasdaq should return to a business model that embraces real-life traders over anonymous, Internet-based trading sites, which in recent years have gobbled up about half of the trading volume of Nasdaq stocks.”