I provided some suggestions for NRA Voters in my last article here, but many have asked for a dedicated Election Article, so here we go.

This year’s NRA elections are both historic and somewhat inconsequential. Historic in that Voting Members will be, I believe, electing more Directors than in any election in the NRA’s 154-year history. Inconsequential in that I believe all 37 of the candidates will be elected or appointed before the end of the year, so what’s the point?

I definitely don’t want to discourage anyone from voting, but your vote really won’t make a whole lot of difference this year, except that your vote could help decide which of the 37 candidates get full three-year terms on the Board, and which ones will only get one or two-year terms – or less.

There’s also a better chance than usual for a write-in candidate to make the cut, so I’d like to bring one of those to your attention right now.

The reason for the unprecedented number of seats up for election this year is an unprecedented number of resignations from the Board over the past year, especially over the past couple of months. And the reason for many of those resignations has a lot to do with the kerfuffle between the NRA and the Board of Trustees of the NRA Foundation, which I discussed at some length on AmmoLand.

The short version is that while the NRA Board of Directors was realigning with “reformers” taking control, a group of long-time Directors who were also serving on the Board of Trustees of the NRA Foundation were quietly maneuvering to separate that organization from the NRA. In the process, they changed the Foundation’s Articles of Incorporation to allow additional Trustees, and the Foundation’s Bylaws to allow the Board of Trustees to name people to their Board, taking that power away from the NRA Board of Directors. This was all done under cover of the settlement agreement reached between the NRA Foundation, the NRA, and the District of Columbia, in a lawsuit launched by the DC AG back in 2020. The suit contended that the Foundation had been improperly providing money to the NRA above and beyond what they were supposed to be doing under their charter and DC’s nonprofit laws.

King, who was the hold-over President of the Foundation Board, failed in his reelection bid for the NRA Board in 2025, then orchestrated the coup, and brought Cotton, Coy, and Barr and others onto the Foundation Board to back his play. All of them, and several others who were in the “Old Guard” faction of the NRA Board, subsequently resigned their seats on the NRA Board.

The good news is that there are now no longer any of the most influential members of the “Old Guard” LaPierre loyalists serving on the NRA Board. The bad news is that most of those are now serving on the Foundation Board.

1. Charles Hiltunen
2. David Raney
3. Amanda Suffecool
4. Mark Vaughan

5. Ted Carter
6. Richard Fairburn
7. Richard Todd Figard
8. Robert Mansell
9. Mark Robinson
10. Todd Vandermyde
11. James Wallace