2006 ABA Board Candidates & Petition Guidelines

At the recent meeting of the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors, held in conjunction with the Winter Institute in Long Beach, California, the Board approved the report of the ABA Nominating Committee, chaired by Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado. The Committee presented the Board with the names of three candidates for three-year terms (2006 - 2009) 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: Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona; Becky Anderson of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville and Downers Grove, Illinois; and Beth Puffer of Bank Street Bookstore in New York City. Shanks 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 3, 2006, to Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 200 White Plains Road, 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, 2006, which, for this year, would be a minimum of 35 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].)
  
  

Also at its January meeting, the ABA Board selected Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana, as ABA President and Changing Hands' Shanks, as ABA Vice President/Secretary for one-year terms beginning in June 2006. Their names and those of director candidates will appear on the Board ballot, which will be mailed in mid-March, for approval by ABA membership.

Booksellers leaving the ABA Board in June 2006 are current ABA President Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami, Florida, and Suzanne Staubach of UConn Co-op in Storrs, Connecticut.

In addition to Langer, this year's Nominating Committee included ABA Board member Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis; Fran Keilty of Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, Connecticut; Neal Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California; and Philip Rafshoon of Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta.

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

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