Doug Hamlin Archives - Page 2 of 2 -

Change Has Come Quickly In Fairfax

Doug Hamlin was elected CEO and EVP of the NRA only yesterday but has hit the road running. Today, he announced that the positions of secretary and general counsel would be separated. As a result, John Frazer is no longer the General Counsel of the NRA. However, he will remain in the position of Secretary for which the Board elected him yesterday.

The new General Counsel is Michael Blaz. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1989. Blaz did his undergraduate work at Auburn University where he was a member of Phi Eta Sigma honor society. According to Martindale-Hubbell, Blaz is licensed to practice law in Virginia (1989) and the District of Columbia (1991).

Here is Hamlin’s announcement of the separation of the two positions and the appointment of Blaz as General Counsel.

Blaz had been the Assistant General Counsel before his promotion to General Counsel. I would also point out that Blaz has significantly more legal experience than Frazer who was only admitted to the bar in 2014.

The optics of a general counsel being found guilty of breach of fiduciary duties made it untenable to keep Frazer in that position. Hamlin has demonstrated he is working quickly to clean up the mess he was left at the NRA.

An Interesting Day In Dallas

This is going to be short post because I’m tired. I have been watching and corresponding about the events surrounding the Board of Directors meeting all day.

First, just the bare facts. Bob Barr representing the Old Guard did win the Presidency. The vote was 37-30. Then the surprises began. Bill Bachenberg from the reform slate went head to head with Blaine Wade for 1st VP and won 36-31. Following that, reformer Mark Vaughan, president of the Oklahoma Rifle Association, beat Tom King 35-31. King really represented the Old Guard and his defeat was a sea change in attitude on the Board.

Second, and what I consider the biggest surprise, Doug Hamlin, Executive Director of Publications and the reformer’s choice for EVP, beat Ronnie Barrett for EVP/CEO. There is some talk that Hamlin is intended as an interim choice while a nationwide search is conducted.

For a bare bones, just the facts ma’am report on what has happened so far, the NRA-ILA did a decent job. Here is a link to it.

A more in-depth report is from Stephen Gutowski of The Reload which has some comments from Jeff Knox.

The last I knew was that the meeting was still continuing after coming back from a dinner break. The keys going forward will be membership on the Nominating and Executive Committee. As I noted this morning, there were no reformers nominated for the Executive Committee. That must change.

I hope to have more tomorrow.