Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA by Tim Mak

Author:Tim Mak [Mak, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, United States, 21st Century, political science, Political Process, Political Advocacy, Corruption & Misconduct
ISBN: 9781524746452
Google: RMdLEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2021-11-15T23:47:02.517916+00:00

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As the Parkland shootings reverberated across America’s political landscape, further eroding the NRA’s power and exacerbating Wayne’s anxieties, the most urgent issue for the group was money. The foreseeable decrease in revenue during the Trump era had not been addressed, and every department within the organization resisted the cuts that Wayne sent Josh Powell to make. Meanwhile, the cost of NRATV continued to rise. The problem got so bad that by the end of 2018, the NRA struggled to pay staff salaries.

The NRA begged vendors for more time to pay bills, and for those they had loans from to give them more time to pay debts. Within the organization, a lawyer named Bill Brewer was beginning to have an outsize role on the costs of the National Rifle Association. Brewer had been brought on to handle New York State’s inquiries into an insurance program that the NRA was running, and his bills were beginning to mount as his clout with Wayne increased.

The cash-strapped NRA had a flow in which it paid bills: pay Brewer, then payroll, and then vendors and lenders. Brewer had directly intervened to make sure his legal bills were prioritized over those of others, according to NRA whistleblowers and other inside sources, which caused a cascading cash crunch that jeopardized the NRA’s ability to pay its own staff. It was only due to a fortunately timed legal settlement in the millions that the National Rifle Association was able to make payroll.

Cuts came that year, squeezing the NRATV project and causing a series of layoffs at the struggling network. Cameron Gray, a producer and sometimes guest host, was fired just short of his ten-year anniversary. Dan Bongino, a conservative firebrand whose reputation and fan base had skyrocketed because of the channel, left NRATV in December 2018 after hosting a show for less than a year.

Employees at NRA HQ began to see their salaries cut. Travel considered as “non-mission-critical” was prohibited in order to bring down expenses. The situation was so strained that the NRA even temporarily stopped offering coffee to its employees, a flashing alarm bell of financial distress if there ever was one. The blow to morale within any organization would be enormous, but at the NRA it was an early hint of how bad things would become. The rank-and-file employees, always subjected to a different set of rules than the execs, were being made to pay for the sins of their leaders.

Support for the NRA’s core missions also fell: a 22 percent cut to the education and training programs; a 61 percent decline for hunter services; and a 51 percent drop in spending on field services, which includes organizing volunteers. The cuts were not enough to put the NRA in the black, however—despite revenues of $352.6 million, the NRA posted a $2.7 million deficit.

It seemed like everything was getting cut—everything but Wayne’s salary. The Officers Compensation Committee, a panel made up of the NRA’s most senior board members, generally makes a recommendation to the wider NRA board as to what executives should make.

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