The media is of course delighting on giving NRA a black eye over Ted Nugent’s antics. CSGV, being liars, demand NRA remove Nugent from the Board. Except there is no provision by which “NRA” can remove a board member. I’m sure they know this and simply hope that their low-information, frothing at the mouth followers aren’t wise to the bullshit CSGV spends all day spewing on social media.
Now, NRA’s bylaws do outline a recall process. There’s currently one going on against Grover Norquist because he’s apparently too much of a muslim lover, or some other fever swamp bullshit (his wife is Palestinian). So if we wanted to recall Nugent, what’s the process? It’s not easy, and it would cost the NRA a lot of money. In truth it’s far easier just to wait for him to be up and vote him out. Here’s the process according to my copy of NRA’s bylaws:
- You have to get the signatures of no less than 450 voting NRA members.
- You need at least 100 signatures from three different states. For example, you’d have to get 100 signatures from, say, Texas members, 100 from Pennsylvania members, and 100 from Tennessee.
- None of the signatures can be dated before the last Annual Meeting.
- You must submit the completed petition to the Secretary no less than 150 days before the next Annual Meeting (so it’s too late for this year).
- The petition must be ruled valid, which means you realistically will need to collect closer to 700 signatures, since you’ll get people signing who think they are voting members, but aren’t.
- The Secretary has to arrange a hearing within 30 days, where both sides testimony are recorded, and a recommendation made as to final disposition.
- The Secretary then has to mail recall ballots to all voting NRA members. It will also have a packet that will also contain letters explaining the accusations and defenses. Note that this would cost NRA a lot of money.
- A majority of ballots have to be in favor of recall, after which the Board of Directors would appoint an interim replacement.
Board members only serve three year terms. This is an inefficient way to remove a Board member. In truth, if you can’t get rid of them through the normal Board electoral process, your petition will probably fail, and then you will have made NRA spend a lot of your money for naught. I would like to see Nugent off the Board, but I wouldn’t start, nor sign a recall petition to do so. Why? Because I think it would fail. In this era of Trump, preceded by years of jackbooted PC thought policing, I don’t think the membership have much patience for “you can’t say that.” People are not in a mood to be persuaded, or to think rationally about things like this.
UPDATE: Ted Nugent is actually up for election this year. If you want to get rid of him, tell everyone far and wide not to vote for him.
Is it life members and above who can vote?
I think yearly membership for 10 consecutive years also gives you voting rights? My associate membership definitely doesn’t, so never got too deep into the rules.
It’s five consecutive years of regular membership or be a life member.
This is an honest question because a lot of my memories of the details have gone away:
Back around Y2K or early in the ’00s there was a bit of an uprising by NRA dissidents, including some incumbent NRA board members, against the self-styled “Winning Team” of the time. Not that it is necessarily relevant to my point but, in general the issue was allegations that the Winning Team had in fact been too compromising of our gun rights in some specific cases.
While no NRA board member was removed from office mid-term, the Winning Team, mainly by controlling virtually every avenue of communication to voting members at the time, and monopolizing all messages thus transmitted, totally shut out the dissident board members for the next election, and as I recall, used the member publications to specifically campaign against them. That of course was successful. I know of one NRA board member, at least, who despite prior terms of conscientious service, was thus lost to the NRA and eventually to the gun rights movement.
The point of my story is, if whoever the NRA Winning Team happens to be at the moment, was not happy with Ted Nugent’s public behavior, they could begin agitation against his reelection right now. Fifteen years ago or so, all it took was being a dissident voice on the board to get the process started.
My question is, what to make of the process not starting? Do the powers that be have a motive for actually liking what Nugent does?
Staffers typically don’t like it when Board members create high-profile headaches for them. Nugent isn’t the only one. I think most of them would prefer Board members never interact with the press or say things that get the press’s attention. There are exceptions to that, for instance, I don’t think anyone had an issue with David Keene speaking on behalf of NRA after Sandy Hook, because he was articulate and on-point. He knew what he was doing.
Sometimes I sympathize with the position that Board members should avoid the spotlight, and sometimes I don’t. There have been times that Sandi Froman, who both Bitter and I know, has ticked of Staff by speaking out publicly, but where we both thought she was right to do so. Staff would prefer control of the message.
I just did an admittedly crude little “study” that illustrates an important difference, in my opinion. I Googled “NRA AND ‘Ted Nugent'” and got 480,000 hits. When I did the same thing with “NRA AND ‘Sandy Froman'” I got 3,900 hits. There is speaking publicly inappropriately, and then there is, Oh Jesus Spare Us!
It seems Ted Nugent has more links to the NRA than he does to people who actually like his music.
Can’t the nominating committee not nominate him?
They could in theory, but the committee has already met. Ballots and the list of nominated candidates are printed. Plus, if they don’t, he could have petitions circulated on his behalf.