2007 ABA Board Candidates and Petition Guidelines

At its February meeting, the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors approved the report of the ABA Nominating Committee, chaired by Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis. The Committee presented the Board with the names of three director candidates for three-year terms (2007 - 2010) on the Board. (Under ABA's bylaws, each year three members of the nine-member Board come to the end of their terms.)

Booksellers nominated as candidates for the upcoming elections are Steve Bercu of BookPeople in Austin, Texas; Tom Campbell of The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina; and Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver. Langer is currently a member of the ABA Board and is eligible for an additional three-year term.

Booksellers leaving the ABA Board in June 2007 are Carla Jimenez of Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida, and Linda Ramsdell of The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick Vermont.

Under ABA's 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 place names 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:

• A candidate must be an employee or 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 14, 2007, to Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 200 White Plains Rd., 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, 2007; that is a minimum of 33 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 Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana, as ABA President and Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, as Vice President/Secretary for additional one-year terms beginning June 2007. Their names and those of director candidates will appear on the Board ballot, which will be mailed in early April, 60 days prior to the ABA Annual Membership Meeting, for approval by membership.

In addition to ABA Board members Collette Morgan and Beth Puffer of Bank Street Bookstore in New York City, this year's Nominating Committee included Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston; Ken White of SFSU Bookstore in San Francisco; and former ABA President Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami and Coral Gables, Florida.