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PFSC op-ed in PA Outdoor News

This was printed in last week’s Pennsylvania Outdoor News:

“In a world filled with fake news, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists hit the ball out of the park. PFSC announced the results of an “election” of new officers, but calling PFSC’s phony scam an election puts the anti-democracy Chinese, North Koreans, Cubans, and Venezuelans to shame. PFSC held a sham election that would be the envy of any of the countries listed above, plain and simple. It was an event designed to give the appearance of legitimacy to the most un-American, anti-democratic voting process I have ever witnessed. Throughout my career as a professional and as a board volunteer with many non-profit organizations, I have seen plenty of jockeying and vying for control of boards of directors, but I have never seen anything as shameful as what happened at PFSC.

First, the “election” was held on the first weekend of the covid19 lockdown, and people who wanted to participate could not, out of fear for their own health or for the health of their families. This automatically excluded many people from otherwise participating, but the organizers went ahead anyhow, showing no commitment to the opening the process to the members.

Second, the selection of candidates to vote for was run by a nominating committee that met in secret, whose members were not known, whose decisions had no minutes or transparency. It was run like the Adam Schiff impeachment hearings. The nominating committee arbitrarily picked some people to be voted on, and excluded other interested candidates, giving no choice in the matter. That is not an election, it is a selection.

Third, a grand total of 26 votes were cast for each position. For an organization that brags about representing 70,000 Pennsylvania sportsmen, this is a farce. No clubs voted, no individual members voted. Only a tiny handful of pre-selected people could even vote, and out of them only 26 voted. This is not representative democracy, this is a sham. Twenty-six total votes! For seventy thousand members! A sham!

Fourth, two of the people elected, Lowell Graybill (was president, then was treasurer, is now president again) and Chuck Lombaerde (was vice president, is now treasurer, had held other roles), have already served as officers for many years. During their tenure as PFSC executives, PFSC has gone from 1,500 clubs to 150 clubs today. Graybill and Lombaerde have been right there PFSC’s whole sad way down. Why would anyone reward them and knowingly vote for two people already strongly associated with the organization’s failure?

In January 2019, both Graybill and Lombaerde voted to remove the Second Amendment from PFSC’s mission statement. They failed because I raised hell, but what kind of proud sportsman would ever vote for someone like that to serve in a leadership role? Like hasn’t anyone noticed that the Second Amendment is under attack? Additionally, for years Graybill has pushed the PFSC board to support radical leftist environmental policies, like banning all gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed. Graybill’s views are contrary to those held by mainstream sportsmen.

The three new people serving as officers seem nice enough, but two have been associated with PFSC for maybe a year, and they were recruited by the PFSC executive director, Harold Daub. When an organization’s executive director packs his board of directors with chums and buddies, it is called feathering his nest. It leads to major organizational breakdowns because of a failure to provide proper board oversight and accountability. So even the new officers are contaminated, right off the bat.

A great deal of this scam election was organized by Brian Hill, the environmental officer at the Richard King Mellon Foundation. Brian Hill is a long time partisan Democrat Party activist, and his latest effort is focused on turning PFSC into a leftwing environmentalist  group. They want the camo without the guns. In 2018, the RK Mellon Foundation, via Brian Hill, paid a consultant who worked with Graybill to try to gut PFSC and turn it into something else unrecognizable to sportsmen. Some of us successfully fought that effort, and I was subsequently told that Hill was warning PFSC members not to support me in any way, or RK Mellon Foundation would not provide any more funding. With “friends” like Brian Hill, does PFSC need enemies? Like it did before, RK Mellon Foundation’s future “support” for PFSC will come with long, destructive strings.

As we have recently seen, leftists are taking over institutions across America – media, academia, the Boy Scouts, NASCAR, etc. Now they can add one more to their list, PFSC. If the new officers had integrity, they would resign and demand a fair and honest election be held, giving all PFSC members and clubs a vote, and all candidates for all board positions given equal opportunity.

For 22 years I have volunteered with PFSC, served on its board, manned the booth at the Outdoor Show, mowed the HQ lawn, given speeches, attended meetings on behalf of the group, etc. As far as I am concerned PFSC has little meaning any more, and this shameful last “election” was just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as it sinks.

–Josh First, Harrisburg, PA

PFSC Life Member, NRA Life Member, PA Trappers Life Member, FOAC Life Member”

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