2005 ABA Board Candidates and Petition Guidelines

At this month's meeting of the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors, the Board approved the report of the ABA Nominating Committee, chaired by ABA Board member Suzanne Staubach of UConn Co-op in Storrs, Connecticut. The Committee presented the Board with the names of three candidates for three-year terms (2005 - 2008) as directors on the Board. (Under the current ABA bylaws, each year three members of the nine-member Board come to the end of their terms.)

The booksellers nominated as candidates for the upcoming elections are: Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana; Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis; and Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco. Lawrence is currently a member of the ABA Board and is eligible for one additional three-year term.

Under ABA bylaws, in addition to candidates put forth by the Nominating Committee and approved by the Board, any bookstore member may submit a petition for a director candidate; there is a time frame of approximately one month to circulate petitions to get on the ballot. Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the petitioned candidate's name to the Director ballot.

Should any bookstore member wish to submit a petition, the following apply:

• To be a candidate for the Board of Directors, one must be an employee/owner of an ABA member bookstore. The member bookstore must be in good standing and the individual candidate must have at least three years experience in a bookstore-member company.
• Each petition can present only one candidate.
• All petitions must be submitted by March 18, 2005, to Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 828 South Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591.
• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must reflect at least two percent of the Bookstore Members as of January 1, 2005, which, for this year, would be a minimum of 36 signatures. The petition must contain original signatures, the name of the ABA member bookstore, addresses, and telephone numbers.
• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must come from at least five states, with representatives of no one state constituting more than 50 percent of the total number of petition signatures.
• Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the petitioned candidate's name to the ballot for Board of Directors' elections sent to the membership. (To help BTW's coverage of the election process, if any bookstore member is working to circulate a petition, please let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected].)

At its February meeting, the Board also selected Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Coral Gables and Miami Beach, Florida, as ABA President and Chapter One's Lawrence, as ABA Vice President/Secretary for one-year terms beginning in June 2005. Their names and those of director candidates will appear on the Board ballot, which will be mailed in early April, for approval by ABA membership.

In addition to Staubach, this year's Nominating Committee included Cathy Langer of the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver; Ann Christophersen of Women & Children First in Chicago; Jerry Brace of Brace Books & More in Ponca City, Oklahoma; and George Kiskaddon of Builders BookSource in Berkeley, California.

For more about the recent ABA Board meeting, click here.

For a list of ABA's current Board members, click here.