Nra Vote Turns Back Those Seeking More Militancy It’s Clear Victory For Executive Vp Who Ran As ‘Mainstream’ Advocate

The National Rifle Association ended one of the fiercest internal power struggles in its 126-year history Monday by turning back a challenge from insurgents who sought more militancy in the leadership of the powerful gun-rights lobbying group.

The vote for officers by the NRA’s 76-member board of directors at the association’s annual meeting here was a clear victory for executive vice president Wayne R. LaPierre Jr., who campaigned as a “mainstream” advocate of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms against what he characterized as an attempt by right-wing anti-government radicals to take over the association.

LaPierre, 42, was decisively returned by a 41-to-31 vote to the $190,000-a-year post he has held since 1991 as the NRA’s chief operating officer. In addition, all of the candidates he backed for other leadership positions defeated those who were supported by dissidents who accused him of inept leadership and financial mismanagement at a time when the association’s assets and membership have been declining.

LaPierre defeated Donna Bianchi, owner of a California gun holster firm, who had told the directors, “This organization doesn’t have an executive vice president. That job is empty and appears to be void.”

Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, who has become almost as famous as a spokesman in NRA advertising as for his earlier screen roles as Moses and Ben Hur, narrowly ousted the association’s hard-line first vice president, Neal Knox, 62, on a 38-to-34 vote. Knox had led the divisive, year-long campaign to replace LaPierre and the other incumbent officers.

In a last-ditch attempt to rally his supporters, Knox criticized the board for surrendering its responsibility for defining NRA policy objectives to LaPierre and other full-time officers. Even as his candidates were going down to defeat, Knox insisted that “nothing has changed” and that management problems remain in the NRA.

“We allowed others, our hired guns, to define that vision,” Knox complained during the “officers’ reports” phase of the board meeting. Knox said he regretted the “circle firing squad” that opposing board members had engaged in over the last year, but he said he had “no apologies for being too zealous in defense of the Second Amendment.”

Marion Hammer, who 14 months ago became the first woman elected to the largely ceremonial position of president, also was re-elected after she chastised insurgent board members for engaging in “rumors and malicious untruths” and warned that “personal agendas are destroying this organization.”

The internal struggle had threatened to weaken the association, widely regarded as Washington’s most powerful lobby, and to diminish its clout with members of Congress who have benefited from its political largess.

Internecine power struggles are nothing new to the NRA, but the campaign fight between LaPierre and Knox was more personal and more public than any previous leadership battle. Exchanging barrages of paid advertisements and widely circulated personal letters, Knox called the incumbents “self-serving, irresponsible (and) incompetent,” while LaPierre and his supporters associated Knox with fringe anti-government militias that have engaged in terrorist acts.

LaPierre’s candidacy received a major boost Saturday when Heston, one of his most ardent backers, was elected to an at-large seat on the board with 74 percent of the vote. Heston, who had run his campaign on stopping Knox, said a victory by the 61-year-old dissident and his supporters could “reduce (the NRA) to kind of a sideshow on the radical fringe of the American scene.”

In an interview on the eve of Monday’s vote, LaPierre said the NRA had reached a “watershed moment” at which its members would have to choose between mainstream strategies for defending the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the “fringe” ideology of radical anti-government militias.