APA Assembly Recorder Albert Gaw, M.D., will face off against Area 3 Representative Lawrence Kline, M.D., in the contest to become the next speaker-elect of the Assembly.

Prakash Desai, M.D., the Assembly’s Area 4 representative, and Barton Blinder, M.D., representative of the Orange County Psychiatric Society, will compete in the race to succeed Gaw as Assembly recorder.

The nominations for the Assembly’s top two posts were announced at the group’s meeting in Washington, D.C., November 10 to 12. The election will be held in May during the Assembly’s next meeting, which will occur just prior to the opening of the 2001 APA annual meeting in New Orleans. Both positions are one-year terms. At the end of that period, the speaker-elect steps up to become speaker.

The Assembly’s current speaker, Michael Pearce, M.D., of Indiana, will serve in that post until the end of the Assembly’s next meeting, at which time speaker-elect Nada Stotland, M.D., of Illinois, will take over the speaker’s duties.