If there is one thing the Greater Columbus Golden Boys and Girls Supporter Group/Lifestyle Brand is known for, it’s a normal, healthy interest in Josh Williams. But if there’s another thing we’re known for, it’s committing to The Bit. So when someone made a joke about doing endorsements, we did what we do and now…
You came here for endorsements and no one’s stopping you from scrolling past this prelude to go straight to them but there are a few things we want to get on the record.
Foremost: Nordecke is a MASSIVE family. We ALL share the same goal: we want to have fun, Up the Lads and win more Cups.
Secondmost: being on the Nordecke Board is a HUGE time commitment and it’s an uncompensated, often thankless gig. Reasonable minds can differ around tactics or decisions — that’s kinda the whole reason for these endorsements — but we are grateful for all current and past Board members’ service.
Lastmost: our endorsement, the vaunted GCGBump™️, is not something we hand out lightly. In order to be considered, candidates had to answer our official GCGBAG Candidate Questionnaire with over three dozen questions. This veritable Voight-Kampff test was designed by experts to not just provide perspective on how each candidate would perform in the position they’re campaigning for but to give us insight into the very essence of their being — who they are as a person and as a Crew supporter — and also see how good they are at flattering us.
There are several fundamental GCGBAG platform planks that we sought clarity on via the questionnaire, including our proposed mandate that all Board members must dress up as Gumbinho for at least one (1) match each term, as well a commitment to enshrining “DOOONNNNN GAARRRBBBEERRR” as an officially recognized Nordecke chant with a board that capos hold up whenever something bad happens. We also asked them to disclose any supporter groups they are affiliated with and whether they know all the words to “Africa” by Toto. Their answers weighed heavily on our endorsement decisions and are reflected by fun little graphic things at the conclusion of each endorsement essay.
Our Official GCGBAG Candidate Screening Committee reviewed all submissions from candidates that completed the questionnaire, evaluated based on their answers and, after great deliberation, arrived at the following endorsements.
Travel Director: Bud Tyler
Incumbent Travel Director Bud Tyler’s accomplishments and profession pedigree earn him our endorsement. Organizing away travel is a huge undertaking. Just reading Bud’s questionnaire, we quickly gained a deeper appreciation for NorOnTour trips we’ve enjoyed where travel, lodging and match tickets were made available to us pre-packaged. That doesn’t happen on accident and we can absolutely see where the 10-20 each week of unpaid volunteer work he puts in goes, especially when you layer opposing team front offices whose eagerness to coordinate with away supporters, shall we say, varies.
Bud’s willingness to serve as Nordecke Treasurer, an un-elected but critical role for the organization, in addition to his Travel Director responsibilities is commendable and makes him an asset on the Board. Although it is not unprecedented for Board members in Nordecke or other organizations to serve in dual capacities, and we do not doubt his ability — he has 30 years of accounting experience and a MBA in finance — or integrity, we do believe there’s value in a broader discussion over whether any Nordecke Board member should wear two hats. It‘s as much about providing Bud with more time and bandwidth to perform the duties of his elected role and meet other obligations — presumably a real-life job, friends and family, walking the dog, bailing Gumbinho out of the clinker after he’s had too much Cinerator and tried to do wheelies on a cop’s bicycle, etc.
The other candidate for Travel Director, Kevin Clark, is a NorOnTour veteran with nearly 12 away trips under his belt since 2021. We think Kevin’s experience is valuable and his willingness to take a greater responsibility is laudable. We appreciate his goal of increasing the number of first-time attendees on away trips. Bring someone to a Crew game for the first time, you’ve created a new fan. Take them on the NorOnTour for the first time and something inside them — something primal — is awakened and they are irreparably changed… but in a good way!
If the GCGBump™️ does the job, we hope that Bud would be willing to collaborate with Kevin in some capacity — and Kevin equally amenable — so that we can have MorNorOnTour.
Partnership Director: N/A
The incumbent Partnership Director Ravi Pandey is running unopposed. He did not complete the GCGBAG Candidate Questionnaire and so is ineligible for our endorsement.
Congratulations, Ravi! Cinerator sponsorship when?
Merchandise Director: Allison McKinley
In the interest of transparency, we’ll disclose off the bat that Allison McKinley is one of two members of GCGBAG running for elected Board positions. And while that knowledge alone should be all you need to give her your vote, she is also eminently qualified for the position and would have locked down our endorsement even if she was in *gasp* Murderer’s Row.
Allison brings energy, a wealth of new ideas and fresh perspective to a position that needs that to thrive. We appreciate her emphasis on providing merchandise options year-round because in our view, outside of the membership kit, Nordecke has for the most part ceded merchandise sales and production to outside vendors or individual supporter groups. Nordecke remaining financially independent is of the utmost importance to GCGBAG, and bringing in revenue from merchandise can play a big role in achieving that. The other side of that coin is that getting stuck with too much of a product that isn’t selling can also hurt that bottom line.
The approach Allison lays out — a mix of collaborative crowdsourcing and data-driven decision-making — reflects the sort of business savvy needed to ensure bold, new products and merchandise strategies don’t end up crippling the organization.
There is a lot to like about the candidacy of Travis Hastings. We know he also brings fresh ideas for merchandise, a team-first attitude and a no-nonsense (well maybe a bit of nonsense; see Discordecke) approach. Should our GCGBump™️ do the job for Allison, we would like to see Travis as a deputy or assisting in the merch game some capacity.
However, it’s Allison’s existing relationships with local vendors that really makes her stands out among the candidates — and makes her ambitious agenda more achievable. As a teacher who is used to working on a tight budget, we have confidence she will be shrewd regardless of what vendor she is negotiating with in order to ensure the best value for the organization and its members. And her willingness to make the Nordecke a business resource for individual supporter groups has the potential to create a positive feedback loop leading to mutual growth. And it will also hopefully lead to periwinkle For Columbus kit-style Nordecke and/or GCGBAG athletic shorts (with pockets) that you can buy with fiat currency.
Allison’s experience and eagerness to work with others makes her asset, both for that scenario and more broadly — and that should not go overlooked. While she states she is not averse to conflict, we believe the level of emotional intelligence she displays will more often than not generate consensus and compromise that leaves everyone feeling heard and valued. We believe she will represent the Board and membership at-large with class and treat all Nordecke members and Crew supporters with dignity.
Matchday Operations Director: Tyler Kendall
Disclosure time again: Tyler Kendall is the other GBAG running for an elected position. Honestly, if it is news to you that TK, our unofficial Brand Ambassador — the official Brand Ambassador is, of course, Gumbinho — and one of our founding members, is in fact affiliated with GCGBAG, well, clearly you don’t have what it takes to be the next Golden Crewzer.
TK is a force of nature. His bellow echoes throughout the Nordecke; his timbre something akin to a classically-trained singer in a 2000s Screamo band with an occasional Cockney accent sprinkled in to keep you on your toes. He is without peer in his ability to Up The Lads. The only people who have more fun than TK are the people around him — a fact anyone who has been interviewed by his alter-ego the Drunken Crewzer or who’s participated in tailgate Water Warz or hibachi nights he has organized in recent years will attest to. His commitment to ensuring everyone has a good time is unwavering.
His sticktoitiveness is another one of his most admirable qualities. He made the GCGBAG-Josh Williams Pizza Party happen through sheer strength of will — and also helped handle the logistical details. When he says will set up away game watch parties across the city, believe him. We also appreciate his vision of creating an events calendar to strengthen Nordecke community bonds both on matchday and beyond (e.g., highlighting a member’s art show or concert or new restaurant opening).
There are a number of strong candidates for this position, and incumbent director Kourtney Sullivan also stands out. Our endorsement decision is not a rebuke of her performance so much as a testament to our belief in TK’s *Wilfried Nancy accent* je ne sais quoi. Assuming the GCGBump™️does its job, we hope Kourtney would be willing to lend her expertise to continue to contribute to Matchday Operations in some capacity as their combined energy and vibes could power Lower.com Field.
Regardless, TK’s well established rapport with many other supporter groups as well as with Official Crew Game Operations folks — he was a finalist for the Supporter Liaison role — will allow him to seamlessly integrate into the Matchday Operations Director role. His honesty and candor are just as appreciated.
“I have yelled at Board members for years about what I think should be done and now this is my put up or shut up moment,” he says. “I’m here to listen to the community and help it grow for future generations to enjoy the Nordecke as I have.”
Matchday Experience Director: Scott Spencer
The incumbent Matchday Experience Director Scott Spencer gets the GCGBump™️ to maintain his seat for the upcoming Nordecke term. While his challenger’s decision not to complete our candidate questionnaire all but locked it down for the man affectionately known as “Skevin,” he earned our endorsement on his own merits.
One thing we noticed toward the end of 2022 and from the onset of the 2023 season was that the capo stands were a better reflection of the broader Nordecke community — not just a loud white dudes (Ed. Note: the essay author self-identifies as a loud white dude). That included the first all-female capo corps for the Real Salt Lake match in April of last year — another historic first for MLS originating here in Flavortown — which Skevin helped facilitate.
We firmly believe that everyone in Nordecke and throughout Crew fandom should be able to see themselves Upping the Lads and, as Skevin puts it, “feel welcomed and empowered to join and volunteer in our community.” We appreciate that he has clearly been infected with the Woke Mind Virus and is willing to take a back seat at times.
“There's also something to be learned from the people in the stands,” he shared in his questionnaire. “Many of the great moments in the section came from just listening and not trying to control things.”
What we also appreciate how open he is to providing mentoring opportunities and that he is being intentional about building the bench and succession planning. It would be easy to typecast him or Matchday Experience Director role itself as the “capo don” but Skevin proves there’s much more to it and earns our enthusiastic endorsement. We can’t wait to see him keep up the good work and keep the Nordecke “fun, electric, and organic” on matchdays in 2024!
Creative Director: N/A
The incumbent Creative Director Brandon Starkey is also running unopposed. He also did not complete the GCGBAG Candidate Questionnaire and so is ineligible for our endorsement. Congratulations, Brandon! You are proudly carrying on the legacy of the TIFO Czar!
Community Director: Melanie Brown
One unabashed positive from Save the Crew movement and establishment of Nordecke as an organization is that it made giving back to the community a centerpiece of our mission. For years, individual supporter groups had done their own philanthropic work and made charitable contributions, but uniting under the Nordecke umbrella had a force multiplier effect.
Jo Rodgers deserves a lot of credit for that, both through her efforts with Save The Crew and then as Nordecke Community Chair. Her resignation in June 2022, following the Dobbs decision and the Crew front office’s cowardly refusal to stand affirmatively for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy was a huge blow for the Nordecke. She left huge shoes to fill, and we believe Melanie Brown is best qualified to fill them.
Melanie’s involved already with numerous nonprofit and community organizations, including The Mother Ship, Inc., which provides support for caregivers of children with special needs; the American Heart Association; and Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS), an organization holds a very special place in our hearts. Last year she assisted in organizing a gear drive for CRIS and 'adopted' multiple families in the Crew community for Christmas.
While Melanie would enter the job with preexisting nonprofit relationships in hand, we appreciate her desire to democratize Nordecke’s philanthropy. “I want our members to have a large say in what organizations and causes we support,” she shared in her questionnaire.
By the same token, she wants to increase transparency and ensure members know where each charitable dollar goes — and we’re all for that.
We believe incumbent director Heather Giles has some great ideas to offer, and her desire to increase Nordecke’s effort’s to assist the unhoused is a righteous cause. While our GCGBump™️ is going to Melanie, we believe that Heather still has much to give.
Regardless of the election outcome, we hope that both candidates will be willing to collaborate in some capacity to continue to expand Nordecke’s charitable giving and grow our footprint in the community.
Communications Director: Blaine Dearth
We said earlier that Nordecke Board positions are often thankless gigs and that’s certainly the case for Communications Director. When things are going well, you’re an afterthought. If things are going poorly, you’re blamed for the mess, or expected to clean up the mess, or often both. That’s because most Nordecke members don’t have personal relationships with people on the Board, but they all have a sort of parasocial relationship with The Nordecke proper, whether through email newsletters or social media.
The Communications Director is The Voice of our collective — often in a literal sense, doing interviews, podcasts and the like. GCGBAG is endorsing Blaine Dearth to be a New Voice for Nordecke.
Blaine’s priorities for the position include maintaining a consistent schedule of content for social media channels, working to establish a cohesive design template for Nordecke materials and leveraging new channels for engagement with supporters (TikDecke, NorTok?). He would also work to make materials from Nordecke Board meetings more accessible to members — especially those not on Slack — and get it out timely. None of what he is proposing is flashy, but it’s practical, and when executed effectively can have a significant impact in reaching potential new members and strengthening the relationship with existing ones.
Blaine’s professional experience as a Communications Director for a political consulting firm and progressive bona fides are a big plus for us. Nordecke prides itself, we think, on being a diverse, inclusive and welcoming place for ALL Crew fans, but, to return to the family analogy from much earlier, every family’s got a Drunk MAGA Uncle.
We don’t believe the Nordecke organization should sacrifice our values or our platform to kowtow a small segment of our membership that doesn’t want to extend that same courtesy or create that welcoming, diverse, inclusive environment outside the confines of Lower.com Field.
We believe Nordecke should stand up affirmatively and unequivocally for bodily autonomy, and speak out against powerful people who want to discriminate against, bully and harass our members, especially members from marginalized communities or with marginalized identities — even if it turns off our Drunk MAGA uncle caucus, the FO or ownership.
The Communications Director isn’t the sole arbiter over whether or to what degree Nordecke takes a stand on issues outside of the Wide World of Sports, but they do play an outsized role and are ultimately responsible for carrying the message. (And for reasons that will be more apparent when you get to the Chairperson endorsement, we thought it appropriate to use this space to opine.)
Incumbent director Chris LaMacchia has by and large served admirably in the role. It hasn’t been perfect — some of the communications and real-time messaging as MLS Cup ticket debacle was unfolding lacked the empathy Crew fans needed in that moment — but we’ll point you back to the first graf of this essay. The Voice of the Nordecke should still be willing to listen and learn, and Chris has shown that, especially recently, through making a concerted effort to increase transparency following issues raised at the annual general meeting and making it a pillar of his campaign. It hasn’t gone unnoticed and it should be applauded. His reticence to don the Gumbinho costume if re-elected on the other hand…
Our endorsement of Blaine is not an indictment of Chris’ performance — nor are any of our other endorsements of challengers over incumbents — but a reflection of our support for his progressive ideals and practical communications strategies.
Chairperson: N/A
In the Good Timeline — the timeline where FC Cincinatti did not ruthlessly assassinate Harambe on May 28, 2016, setting in motion all the terrible events that have since transpired — we would be using this space to offer our vigorous endorsement of Kourtney Sullivan for Chairperson. When Kourtney completed her GCGBAG questionnaire, she indicated her desire to run for Chairperson but ultimately chose to run for her current position on the Board for “official” Nordecke election purposes. Kourtney is our kind of people and the Nordecke needs her glorious, chaotic energy next year in some capacity.
But we are not in that timeline and we know what you are thinking: “There are still multiple actual candidates for Chairperson, and you’re going with N/A!?”
Well see what had happened was we were determining the makeup of our Official GCGBAG Candidate Screening Committee, and we decided we needed an odd number members so there couldn’t be any ties, and when we asked how many we should have Enrique St. Sebastian suggested: “How about nine?” And we said: “Why nine?” And Enrique said: “Well there are nine justices on the Supreme Court and that is working out pretty great for America, so it should work out great for GCGBAG!“ And so we went with nine, and when we finally got to Chairperson, we realized that, with Kourtney officially out of the mix, there were now three declared candidates, all of whom had submitted questionnaires and were therefore eligible for endorsements, and we started to get a bit nervous, and Enrique said: “OK, but what are the chances that we’ll have a three-way tie?” And sonofabitch wouldn’t you know it…
One contingent backed incumbent chair Katie Sherer, who is pushing for a much needed update for the bylaws and increased involvement within the Nordecke organization. Another supported Kristina Balevska in her mission to return to the original vision of Nordecke from 2008. And the third were our Scott Haag heads, citing his extensive experience in nonprofit and philanthropy making him a natural fit for the role.
We spent hours trying to break the gridlock but we couldn’t. No one would budge — least of all Enrique — and as we all came to grips with what we had to do, Enrique said: “Guys, in hindsight, we probably should have seen this coming because the Supreme Court sucks and it makes America worse pretty much any time it does something.” And we all stared at him and went: “Enriqueeee!🙄”
And so that is why we are not endorsing a candidate for Chairperson. Vote with your heart!
So there you have it — our endorsements for the 2024 Nordecke Board of Directors elections. Voting is under way now! Polls remain open until Jan. 15 at 9 a.m. ET. If you’re reading this Jan. 15 and you’re still in line at your polling place YOU’VE BEEN HAD! The link to vote should be in your email.
For additional details about elections and candidates, head over to the Nordecke Election Hub: https://nordecke.com/2023/12/18/2024-nordecke-board-of-directors-elections-hub/
To view all the candidates answers to all each question on our Official GCGBAG Candidate Questionnaire 👇
