USPSA President Special Election 2022

[JCN]

I think YML decided to not even bother anymore. At this point why would anyone even want to be the president of USPSA??

I feel that way about the presidency of the USA.

And that was part of my initial response to the calling of “Foley must be terminated!”

Who are you going to find that’s less dysfunctional?

[ECK]

Regardless of who is elected, the authority of the president has been greatly reduced by the recent bylaw changes and essentially is now controlled by the board. Here’s the funny part: a lot of that development were the reaction (overreaction perhaps) to Stoeger actions over the years.

My impression was the changes to the bylaws governing the role of the President was the BOD’s attempt to curb one person’s ability to steam roll the org in a certain direction and enforce additional checks and balances. This was a departure from the previous governing model where one man (the President) was able to push through a number of changes that kicked off a lot of the polarization that is present in the membership today. For example: changes to Prod and CO weight limits, the list of allowed modifications to Prod and CO, hosting more nationals than the org can afford, etc. but one cannot ignore the fact that CO is/has been a raging success in its current form resulting from all the changes. But it is also true that there are people in both camps, those for and against the changes.

YML, and the other candidates that ran for President, knew that the role (and salary) had changed when they campaigned for the job, yet they still ran. And there appears to be a healthy number of people still interested in the position given the current list of candidates vying for the position in the current election.

I have to believe that all the candidates have the best interest of the sport in mind and want it to succeed. It’s self-serving for them to do so as their “job” is based on having a healthy organization. That being said, we may disagree on the details of what they feel would benefit the org or their priorities, but at the end of the day I think what we want is somebody who can speak articulately, promote the sport, and act like an adult.

I also think we should hold elected officials to a higher standard of behavior. Foley was a very competitive person (aren’t we all?) and I think that tendency led him to be combative in social media and in person when called out by a critic. From my interactions with YML at major matches over the years, I’ve seen him perform very conscientiously as a CRO/RO, but I’ve also seen him act like a frat-boy on spring break. As a result you never really knew which YML was going to show up. So I’m not surprised at the outcome here….