Bitter and I are going to continue our tradition of issuing endorsements for candidates for NRA Board of Directors. For those of you who are voting NRA members (Life member or higher, or people who have 5 unbroken years of annual NRA membership), you will soon begin receiving your ballots in your next copy of your magazine.
Why have endorsements? Because I’ve long been an advocate of bloggers having a voice at NRA, and one opportunity the NRA offers for having that voice is to vote for board members. We need people who share the views of the blogging community, share our outlooks, and who are willing to listen to us, and take us seriously. Often times that’s hard to know from the biographies in the magazine, which are always going to be favorable, because those are the people the nominating committee want to see elected.
We have endorsed six people for the board this year. That’s not to say there aren’t other people who have been nominated who are not worthy. These are candidates we have a good feeling about, or that we know personally. What we look for in board members are people who are going to be engaged members. I don’t want people who will just be a rubber stamp, will merely follow the herd, or will enjoy the title of the office without contributing much to it. But by the same token, I’m not looking for gratuitous pot stirrers, people who will be a pain in the ass, make the organization look bad, or make life unreasonably difficult for NRA staff.
I am going to endeavor to bring you more than just “Vote for this person, because I say they are worthy.” We are going to line up interviews with some of our endorsed candidates, so readers can judge for themselves. We will announce the endorsed candidates later in the week. In the mean time, I will be posting a bit on the role of the board, how NRA elections work, and more on why blogs should have a role to play in this process, particularly in bringing better information to voting NRA members about the people they are being asked to vote for.
Please consider endorsing Bob Viden, from Glassboro, NJ. Uncle Bob, as he is known, has always stood for the “right” thing, even if not popular or PC. He is a well spoken front man for gun rights in Trenton, an extremely hard job.
We are limiting our selection to only six, and I will say that we considered Bob, think he’s a worthy board candidate, but declined endorsement this time around because we wanted to limit ourselves to six. There were a lot of good people we had to pass up to whittle it down to six candidates.
How many board members are there?
Several people will probably have their pet favorites who they hope will be on the list. If they find those folks aren’t, we’re by no means saying not to vote for people because they aren’t on the list. It just means that there are six we found who we think, based on their history and our observations, are worthy of being marked on the ballots. Since people can vote for up to 25, that by no means limits their votes to our endorsed group.
In our discussion about Bob, we did credit his efforts in New Jersey. He’s certainly important to the cause there as an officer in ANJRPC and gun shop owner. But, I personally believe that it’s really time to innovate in New Jersey. Gun owners there have their backs against the wall already, and there are struggles to fend off even more restrictions. Yet, when you come to PA gun shows – or even the sportsmen’s show 2.5+ hours away in Harrisburg – there are Jersey tags filling the parking lots and many of them are not involved in any of the efforts to defend our gun rights there.
While I’ve heard good things about his gun shop and he does cover quite a bit in ANJRPC’s newsletter, we are looking for folks who will really stand out in the future of our movement. That might mean new media outreach, innovation when it comes to their area of expertise, or someone we have observed to bring new and worthwhile ideas to the table. Bob is a nice guy, and his work is appreciated in New Jersey, we thought there were six others who stood out more.
Right now we’re still putting the final touches on write-ups about our endorsed candidates. However, I think you’ll get a better idea about what our decisions were based upon when when you read those. Again, our message will not be that folks should only vote for these candidates, they are merely folks who stand out for reasons we will outline.
NUGUN, 76 in total, with 25 seats up at any given time. 75 of the seats are 3-year terms and 1 is a 1-year term. The “76th Director” or the one with the 1-year term, is elected by members attending the Annual Meeting.
We’ll spend the next few weeks explaining more about the elections. Many people, even those who vote, aren’t very well versed in how they happen. It’s important to know the association if you’re going to vote. :)
Since you are on this subject, are you aware that NRA BoD members Jay Printz and Budd Schroeder blog at American Daughter?
Both were re-elected last year, so endorsement is not an issue, but since blogging directors are of interest to you, I thought you’d like to know.
I will keep that in mind when they are up again. I didn’t know they were blogging there.
Hey Sebastian,
I have my March issue and I’m really confused as to whether I should be marking 25 or 26 candidates. It says 26 on the ballot, but the report of the nominating committee says 25.
Help!!! :)
Kathy, you can mark up to 26. I typically don’t use all my votes.