by Those who thought that with the reformers ascendant in the NRA that the Old Guard would, to paraphrase Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, go quietly into the night would be mistaken. With the Nominating Committee chaired by Buz Mills and filled with reformers, many in the Old Guard whose terms are expiring are, by necessity, going the petition route.
Some like former NRA President Charles Cotton seem to have taken a stealth approach. From what I understand, he worked his connections in Texas to gather enough signatures to be on the ballot for 2026. I should note that he was not in attendance at the recent Fall Meeting of the NRA Board.
Others were working to gather signatures at the Board meeting and I did sign a number of petitions. I did this because I did see many of the Old Guard working cooperatively with the reformers to rebuild and rejuvenate the NRA. At the end of our semi-marathon Board meeting, many on both sides stood to say it was good to see everyone working together for the good of the NRA and gun rights.
A friend tipped me off to a website linking to the petitions of many of the Old Guard or newbies associated with them. It is called votersaware.com. There are petitions for existing directors such as Curtis Jenkins, Barbara Rumpel, and Eb Wilkinson among others. In addition you have potential candidates like Jeff Fleetham and Lane Ruhland who ran unsuccessfully in 2025 plus two or three other new candidates.
I don’t know who established this website but the Wayback Machine shows it having posts going back to 2016. Back then it was affiliated with an independent expenditure PAC. It seemed to have an anti-Hillary Clinton focus along with conservative leanings. Examining the page source of the page now, I did come across a reference to https://www.armsandammunitionnews.com. Using the Wayback Machine again, that led to an endorsement by Bob Barr of the list of candidates affiliated with the StrongNRA (Old Guard) team in the 2025 board election. If I had to make a guess, and it is only a guess, the website is somehow affiliated with him.
I am not saying to sign or not sign these petitions. Use your own good judgment.
I would, however, say re-electing Charles Cotton to the Board of Directors would be a travesty.
I am hoping there will be a Reform slate for the next election. Eventually, the NRA needs to get away from the bio only candidate statements and allow policy campaigning.
A campaign for the reform slate is in the works. Most will be from those nominated plus a few who are running by petition.
I can’t disagree with you on the bio only statements in the NRA magazines. In the past, petition candidates were few and far between and you only got on the ballot with Wayne’s blessing. The ElectANewNRA.com was a big change from the past. I know I spoke on 5-6 podcasts promoting the reform ticket.
To my misfortune, I am stuck in a retirement system that has similar policies to the NRA. Staggered terms and bio only statements. The board is so bad that it was actually an improvement when the law was changed to let the governor to appoint a couple of members. The board is totally dominated by the staff as none of them, except the gubernatorial appointees have any expertise necessary to oversee such a thing.
Based on the crazy asks I’m getting now for petition signings from people who have absolutely not changed their positions on anything, I can’t see that there’s any future backing so-called slates.
Granted, given that I have a long memory and keep lots of records, I’m pretty sure the response I just sent to one of your reformer allies is going to get my email pulled off of the outreach. But, oh well, Jacqueline Janes is likely the only name I’ll drop to our several hundred voting members.
Agreed, allowing Charles Cotton back inside the NRA would be hazardous to the reform movement and any future the NRA has.
I guess there’s still plenty of head in the sand Texans who blindly support Cotton, refuse to learn the truth and acknowledge he was neck deep in the corruption.