ORIGINAL: F106A
If Dave decides to run again, and I think he will, he will win. He has a hardcore group of supporters, mostly FF and C/L, who will vote for him no matter what. Look at the previous elections, he always gets around 15,000, +/-, and since so few members vote he wins easily.
He has to retire sometime and maybe his recent medical problems will point him in that direction.
Twelve years is too long for anyone to be president; we need some new ideas.
//snip//
Jon
Except for the last sentence (snipped), 106, I agree with your post. In my contacts with the organized FF and CL groups during 3 attempts to get back on the AMA EC, I found that within those groups there was very little positive reception to any change in AMA's incumbent hierarchy. Interesting item: one FFer,
not a really well known name in the competition circles, was very pro for me until he was advised that if I should win the AMA Executive Vice President position, I was NOT going to immediately jump into getting AMA into purchasing 100 acre+ facilities for FF modelers around the country. Then I lost my popularity there! [
]
I also have at least weekly contact with the
Chairman of the CL Combat Contest Board. At one time I was a hard-core CL / FF Contest flier. I am still very familiar with many of the "Names" in CL and some of the FF people. With all this association and recent contact with various group leaders, I still firmly believe that the CL / FF AMA member community is composed of mostly competition oriented modelers. They are very aware of general AMA make-up and they deadly fear AMA's leaning to the majority of the RC sport community.
Therefore they will continue to hold on to TODAY and hope for today's reality to take care of tomorrow. After all they have no need for frequencies, FAA/NTSB possibilities, etc. All they want is that NATs each year with many many events and applicable plaques.
While I don't recall exact numbers, in the past 10 years there have been published numbers indicating some 3000+ AMA FFer and 10000 AMA CLers. THEY VOTE!
I also agree w/Bob101, many of his editorials are doom and gloom and not about the positive aspects of modeling.
Dave has made a few mistakes in his columns, and he has hit the nail on the head with a few -- which are probably the worst ones as far as the Rank & File sport RCer is concerned. [8D] After all he is trying to maintain some form of equilibrium within the structure and maintain insurance at a reasonable rate. OTOH he never addresses the cost of the
largest single expense outside salaries and benefits which is of course the "MA" cancer that is eating up the organization in cost well outside of the actual $$ expense. That has been explained in this forum a number of times. In addition Mr. Holland never addresses his own performance and lack thereof, as Chief Financial Officer. So it ain't all DB!!![:@]