NRA and online communities
A post on how AR15.com helped change NRA. Joe DeBergalis was elected. He had support from blogs and AR15.com. Partially because he made himself available to forum guys and bloggers. He posted comments at both.
The AR15.com post doesn’t mention that their other endorsement of George Kollitides came in just about last place (supposedly. I’ve not confirmed that yet – but will). Kollitides was not exactly well-received by the a lot of the gun bloggers. Mostly because he didn’t interview, engage anyone, and his entire ‘campaign’ was a puff piece in an NRA magazine. And, surely now, his ties to Chrysler would be a detriment.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I would say it was mostly because he didn’t show up to previous board meetings. 🙂
If you are on a committee as a non-board member and still can’t make an effort, you’ll be an empty seat on the board. What purpose does that serve? In fact, the AR15.com guys didn’t even know that he didn’t show up to meetings. (For the record, someone who knows him told me he didn’t come to Phoenix, either.) When I asked them about their endorsement once they found out he never participated, they stopped emailing/commenting. Funny how that is.
I would actually say that what got Joe on the board is not just an online component. He was just as open and accessible in person. A good board campaign includes trips to gun shows, meetings with gun clubs, outreach to state associations, and more. Given how open Joe is, I wouldn’t doubt it if any real life campaign efforts paid off just as much.
And you are correct. He did come in last. Dead last. I’ll have a blog post with the full results & random stats about the elections later today.