March 5, 1999

APA Vice President Daniel Borenstein, M.D., by a margin of more than 2,000 votes, has won the post of president-elect in the 1999 APA election. Borenstein, who is in private practice in Los Angeles, garnered 59.3 percent of the votes to 40.7 percent for his opponent Lawrence Stone, M.D., of San Antonio.

"I was very pleased to have won the election and delighted to have a wonderful Board with whom to work," Borenstein told Psychiatric News.

High on his agenda are issues of patient privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of patients' psychiatric records, Borenstein said. He also plans to continue working to change APA's structure and functions and vowed to "improve communications and relationships with our district branches [see page 2] and specialty organizations. . . . In these perilous times, we can ill afford internecine battles or power plays by individuals or groups of members within our organization."

Paul Appelbaum, M.D., a renowned forensic psychiatrist who is chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, was elected vice president by a margin almost identical to Borenstein's. Appelbaum, who is completing a term as APA secretary, outpolled former Assembly Speaker Jeremy Lazarus, M.D., of Denver, 59.1 percent to 40.9 percent.

Another race that saw a Board of Trustees incumbent emerge victorious was that to replace Appelbaum in the secretary position. That race went to Michelle Riba, M.D., of Ann Arbor, Mich., who won 62.1 percent of the ballots, while her opponent, Chester Schmidt Jr., M.D., of Baltimore, received 37.9 percent. Riba is associate chair for education and academic affairs at the University of Michigan and directs a psycho--oncology program there.

New York psychiatrist Ann Maloney, M.D., emerged victorious in the three-way race for one of the Board's three trustee-at-large positions. Maloney, a private practitioner, has been active in early career psychiatrist issues and is a past chair of the APA Assembly Committee of Early Career Psychiatrists. A race with more than two candidates invokes APA's preferential balloting system, and on the first round Maloney led with 40.4 percent of the votes, to 31.7 percent for Ezra Griffith, M.D., and 27.9 percent for Richard Balon, M.D. When Balon's votes were redistributed, Maloney's total rose to 56 percent and Griffith's to 44 percent.

The race to be the Board's member-in-training trustee-elect was one of APA's rare four-way contests. The victor, Sandra DeJong, M.D., a resident at the University of Massachusetts, led with 47.8 percent of the votes after the first round of tallies. Elizabeth Ortiz-Schwartz, M.D., received 21.2 percent, John Webber, M.D., had 20.8 percent, and Emine Nalan Iscan, M.D., got 10.2 percent. After Iscan's votes were redistributed among the remaining three candidates, DeJong emerged with a majority.

Two Area representative positions were contested in this year's election. In Area 2, the incumbent, Herbert Peyser, M.D., of New York City, was reelected in another three-candidate race. His opponents were Edward Stephens, M.D., and Anthony Villamena, M.D. Since Peyser won a majority of the votes-53.8 percent-the preferential balloting system did not need to be used. Stephens garnered 24.3 percent of the votes and Villamena 21.9 percent.

Area 5 also elected its trustee in this election cycle. Jack Bonner, M.D., of Greenville, S.C., outpolled Dudley Stewart Jr., M.D., by 63.7 percent to 36.3 percent. Bonner is medical director of Behavioral Health Services in Greenville. Bonner had served two terms as Area 5 representative from 1990 to 1996.

One amendment to the APA Constitution and two proposed bylaws changes were also on this year's ballot. The constitutional amendment would have shifted and redefined the fellow and distinguished fellow categories of APA membership. Though more than 66 percent of the voters approved the amendment, it fell just short of the two-thirds needed for a proposal designed to amend the Association's constitution.

Both of the proposed bylaws changes, which needed only a simple majority vote, passed. The first of these advocated moving the procedures for transferring district branch membership and procedures from one membership category to another from the Association's bylaws to its Operations Manual. This passed with 89.9 percent of the eligible votes.

The second bylaws change, which passed after being endorsed by 85.1 percent of voters, affects APA's voting procedures. It will allow APA to "explore the possibility of electronic voting in the future while maintaining the confidentiality of the members' votes." It also eliminated a long-standing requirement that proposed amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws had to be read at each annual meeting, which, critics charged, delayed the process of getting them on the election ballot.