POLGAR AND TRUONG MARRIAGE REVEALED

About May 15, it was learned that Executive Board candidates Susan Polgar and Paul Truong are married to each other.  The marriage is believed to have occurred last December.  Susan and Paul have not confirmed the date but have admitted the marriage took place "months" ago and have not denied the widely published December 2006 timing.

There is nothing in the USCF bylaws prohibiting husband and wife from serving on the Executive Board together, but as some voters may be concerned about the Executive Board including a family with two votes, the marriage should have been disclosed to the voters in Susan and Paul's Chess Life statements.  Not only was it not revealed, but when Brian Lafferty raised the issue of whether the two were married in a post on the USCF Issues forum in February, Susan's response was to attack Lafferty while not answering his question.  Now it is too late to inform the voters who obtain all their election information from Chess Life.

Following are some reactions to this news posted on the USCF Issues Forum:

By Brian Mottershead:

I can't say what the rules are at the USCF concerning married people and relatives working for the organization either as employees, volunteers, or EB members. Someone else will have to speak to that.

Even if it is permitted under the rules, each voter will have to decide for himself how independent they think EB members should be from one another, and how much of an impediment to independence marriage might be in particular cases. I've made my opinion clear that I think board members should be independent and in the absence of persuasive evidence, I would assume that a married couple would not be independent enough. To be honest I was concerned that Polgar and Truong were not independent enough of one another even before I learned of their marriage, and this new information only aggravates my concerns.

If their marriage had been disclosed already it would be for me as a voter to decide what I might think of it. And other voters can in good faith draw a different conclusion than me.

But the reprehensible part of this is that Polgar and Truong apparently sought to deprive the voters of the opportunity to make judgements concerning their independence by withholding until this late stage in the election the fact they are married. That is not honest.

They still have not officially announced it; but it has come out, apparently as a result of them both going to work at Texas Tech. Apparently, the administration at Texas Tech and journalists in Texas are entitled to know things that must be kept private from USCF voters.

By Herbert Rodney Vaughn:

I have no problem with a candidate that wants to keep a personal life PRIVATE. If they don't think it any of my business, then I agree -- I won't object as long as they KEEP it none of my business. If it started to interfere with their duties, THEN I'd object. Until then, who cares?

I DO have a problem with a candidate that has an "unusual" personal life and wants to trumpet the details all over the place -- driving away sponsors, members, etc. By "unusual" I mean things like: frequenting young prostitutes, engaging in group sex, and participating in a polygamous marriage. If somebody wants to have a private life like that and then announce it to the world, it's likely to harm our organization to have a person like that as an officer.

Keeping a married life private hardly seems to be objectionable. Our organization has no rule about married people working together. Some organizations do, but it's FAR from universal.

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