THE POLITICS BEHIND THE CHANNING FOUR

By Larry Parr


Fascinating politics lie behind the early
announcement of a ticket for the Executive Board
elections in 2007.

The ticket consists of celebrated Grandmaster
Susan Polgar, Paul Truong, Dr. Mikhail Korenman and
Randy Bauer. Bill Goichberg has indicated privately
that he will support and, indeed, work for the ticket.
My sources tell me that Joel Channing, the wealthy
Florida real estate developer and current USCF
Executive Board member, will finance the campaign,
promising an essentially open checkbook in return for
his becoming president, tossing over Mr. Goichberg.

A lot has been happening behind the scenes, and
the ticket is in part based on the fear that Sam Sloan
will win next year unless stopped by overwhelming
financial resources brought to bear.

One source states that Mr. Goichberg will be
telephoning potential candidates, offering inducements
to have them step aside for the announced Polgar
ticket. Several candidates from California and points
west of the Mississippi will be asked to defer their
candidacies in return for future support and,
possibly, special favors from the USCF office and
Chess Life.

A secondhand source, very close to one candidate
running on the ticket, told me privately that there is
NO INTENTION of permitting Channing to purchase the
presidency by supporting the ticket financially.
(Putting the knife into Channing by his allies will be
the first political doublecross after the elections,
if the ticket is successful.) Goichberg is understood
to be a carcass - a cross between a discarded appendix
and chopped liver - though he currently hopes that he
will carry on. If successful, the ticket members will
vote to elect GM Susan Polgar as the next USCF
president. Period.

Another source stated that Goichberg has, in
truth, little chance of convincing other candidates to
bow out and that there will be a fairly crowded field.
The anti-Sloan strategy may cause many voters to cast
their ballots for Sam for fear that a clique of
insiders is attempting a coup. Sam will trumpet
ethics, his successful discombobulation of Robert
Tanner, and the need for transparency against moneyed
insiders. It may prove a successful strategy against
heavy-handed political tactics.

Still, the announced candidates must be regarded
as the hot runners at this point. If the election
were held this Friday, all four would win thanks to
heavy support from the schlolastics community.

The factors favoring the ticket are lavish
financing from Mr. Channing, GM Polgar's name
recognition and favorable image, and the push by
scholastic types to assume control of the Federation
and fundamentally change both Chess Life and the
direction of the USCF.

At first reckoning, there is no roadblock - no
pothole along the political highway - that can upend
this electoral juggernaut. Yet excepting Dr.
Korenman, each member of the ticket has made quite a
few enemies, and the likelihood of a fairly crowded
field will discourage ticket voting. Too, the enmity
between several ticket members and Sam Sloan will
ensure a polemical battle royal.

Several members of the traditional organizer
class that has long controlled the USCF will campaign
against the ticket. These people believe that those
representing scholastic interests are making a major
push to transform the USCF into, when all is said and
done, an organization of students and their chess
coaches. They fear that the old structure that was
the Federation will go the way of the defunct
Manhattan Chess Club, a traditional haunt of New York
players, that was devoured hook, line and library by
the Chess in Schools program.

In the days before OMOV - one man, one vote -
the opposition of the organizer class would have been
decisive in holding off the Polgar ticket. Not so
today. The chances are at best even for the
organizers, assuming they can unite and find
financing. Still, if one or two members of the ticket
fail to win election, then the day of scholastic
reckoning will be put off for a few more years.

One senses that the combative nature of certain
ticket members will alienate some voters. Randy
Bauer, who is quickly becoming a traditional and
vicious candidate in the Robert Tanner mode, enjoys
his slings and arrows, though his chess political
career thus far suggests that he outrages fortune.
Paul Truong has conducted numerous long and
acrimonious debates in which, by and large, he has
been on the side of the angels, but the point here is
that these battles have given him political baggage,
some of which GM Polgar is also lugging around.

My prediction at this point: Polgar and
Korenman will win; Truong and Bauer will make new
enemies and rekindle old animosities. They might go down.

Sam Sloan? He is in a far stronger political
position than ever before. He will be able to point
to numerous achievements in ferreting out corruption.
His censure at the precise moment that he brought down
Robert Tanner, one of the Board insiders, will get
played again and again - but by Sam. He will display
his censure - quite rightly, too - as a Badge of
Honour. He will note - quite truthfully, too - that
he paid a price for exposing corruption on the part of
a Board member who has NOT been censured or condemned
by his fellow Board members, even though forced to
resign in disgrace for serial cheating and, yes,
lying. Many voters will note the double standard and
the arrant hypocrisy.

In spite of the above, one figures that Sam will
get squeezed off the Board in the next election by the
Channing-financed ticket and by those traditional
organizers who will use guerrilla tactics in depleting
Channing's combat strength. Sam's vote total will be
respectable, but no better than that because political
physics next year will be written in unfavorable
formulae. Sam and other points of intellectual and
Caissic light will get sucked into an electoral black hole.

Every effort will be made by Bill Goichberg
and other insiders to discourage candidacies that
could muddy the effort to defeat Sam Sloan and to
elect the Channing Four. But the push to restrict
candidacies will fail because three of the four ticket
members have made enemies and because many deadenders
will man the barricades against a scholastic takeover
of the Federation.

Deadenders? Do they have any chance?

Don't forget that the anti-American insurgency
in Iraq was initially written off as comprised of a
few hundred deadenders. Sometimes, after deadenders
get organized, they outwork, outfight and outthink
members of conventional forces. Their numbers grow, too.

As in Iraq, one figures that political IEDs
will take a partial toll among the Channing Four.
Indeed, two of the four - but no more.