L/A chamber president resigns over fundraising raffle with AR-15 as prize
Photo: Russ Dillingham, Sun Journal Staff Photographer
Matt Leonard, the president and CEO of the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, has resigned over a fundraising raffle for a custom-built, semi-automatic rifle on Election Day.
The president and CEO of the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Matt Leonard, submitted his immediate resignation to the board Wednesday over fallout from a now-canceled raffle of a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle on Election Day.
Leonard has been the head of the chamber since May 2015.
In a news release, Leonard wrote that the raffle was “not properly vetted by the board of directors” and said that he made “a colossal error in judgment with a corresponding failure in leadership” and offered an apology to both the chamber and the community.
"Upon decisive, explicit and strong order from the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce board of directors, effective immediately, the 'Gun Raffle' and any promotion thereof is retracted," wrote Leonard in a prepared statement. "The board has personally expressed to me without equivocation that the distasteful combination of the timing and content of the email that was sent yesterday promoting this raffle does not represent their guidance and intent.”
Leonard told the Sun Journal that chamber staff members had spent a month developing the raffle to ensure that it was within state laws, adding that although the board of directors knew of the possible raffle they had yet to properly vet the idea.
Leonard told the Sun Journal that the raffle was meant to raise money for the chamber and to promote chamber member Top Gun of Maine in Poland Spring. As of Wednesday morning, Leonard told the Sun Journal that around 10 of the chambers 1,162 members had pulled their membership and that more withdrawals are expected.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments