Former Florida congressman and failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Allen West has announced that he wants to take the place of Wayne LaPierre as Executive Vice President of the NRA.
Allen West, the former Republican Party of Texas chairman who recently ran in the Republican primary election against Gov. Greg Abbott, announced Monday that he would accept a nomination to be the executive vice president (EVP) of the National Rifle Association (NRA) at an upcoming meeting in Houston.
“As now known, several individuals came to me via email last week requesting I consider allowing them to nominate me for EVP of the NRA,” West told The Texan. “I have humbly consented because the progressive socialist left seeks to eradicate our Second Amendment right.”
Yeah, I’m sure that was an out-of-the-blue request that West himself had nothing to do with ginning up. Let’s face it: Humble is not his brand.
Last week, a current and several former NRA board members announced a draft campaign to nominate West to lead the Second Amendment advocacy organization in light of the legal challenges currently plaguing the group and its current EVP, Wayne LaPierre.
West served on the NRA board from 2016 to 2021.
The NRA was chartered in New York and is currently headquartered in Virginia, but the organization has expressed interest in reincorporating and moving its headquarters to Texas.
But those possibilities have stymied as the group has been embroiled in a legal challenge from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has been pushing for the organization’s dissolution.
“After watching the NRA’s Bankruptcy hearings, reviewing the evidence presented and New York law, I have concluded that the likelihood of [James] winning her lawsuit against Wayne LaPierre and the other defendants is very high,” said Phillip Journey, the current NRA board member who is leading the campaign to give the helm to West.
West’s name has been floated as a replacement for LaPierre before. Obviously Journey won’t stop believing…
“If she wins, they will be prohibited from serving in any NY non-profit. Wayne will be removed from office by court order,” said Journey. “As an NRA member and a member of its Board of Directors, I have a duty to plan for that contingency.”
“I know Col. Allen West will make a great Executive Vice President of the NRA. Col. West is a nationally recognized advocate for the Second Amendment. He has extensive political experience and a record of speaking out on the NRA Board of Directors for the reform and the restoration of the National Rifle Association.”
The NRA board will hold an election for its leadership positions later this month during a meeting in Houston.
LaPierre’s tenure started out as leading one of the most influential organizations in the country and ended as a corrupt disaster. Wayne has to go (and the NRA won’t get a single dime from me until he’s gone), but West is the wrong man to replace him. West came to Texas to run the National Center for Policy Analysis in 2016. It closed its doors in 2017.
West is being sued by Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), which claims that his brief tenure as CEO was marked by bad decisions and mismanagement that alienated donors and financially crippled the once-thriving organization. Codefendants have recently sought to settle their related claims.
Under Mr. West’s leadership, the NCPA hired a chief financial officer who was already on probation for embezzlement and who then dismantled the organization’s fiscal controls. The CFO (who is now in prison) embezzled more than $600,000 from the NCPA.
The lawsuit charges that Mr. West and other board members misspent more than $1 million in restricted grant money on operations – including salaries, expenses and bonuses – and hid that information from the rest of the board and donors.
West’s brief tenure as head of the Texas Republican Party was similarly fractious, even if I might have agreed with him on many of the issues under contention. Neither organization he led seemed better for his leadership.
LaPierre needs to go, but West would not be an improvement. To my mind, it would be far better to draft former NRA-ILA head Chris Cox, who resigned from the board under pressure from LaPierre, as the next Executive Vice President, assuming he’d be willing to take the position.