Ezra Knight Reelected President Of SAG-AFTRA’s New York Local In Clean Sweep For Ruling USAN Party

Ezra Knight has been reelected president of SAG-AFTRA’s New York Local in a landslide victory that also gave his running mates a clean sweep of the election. Knight received nearly 73% of the votes cast in a four-person race for president. His four vice presidential running mates – Linda Powell, Anthony Rapp, Jim Kerr and Liz Zazzi – were also elected.

Knight is the leader of the local’s ruling USAN party that endorsed the unity slate led by SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and Secretary-Treasurer Joely Fisher, who also won landslide victories last night.

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Knight was also the top vote-getter in the NY local’s national board races, and here too his USAN running mates won every race, including Avis Boone, Christine Bruno, Samantha Mathis, Michael Gaston, Phoebe Jonas, Samantha Macivor and Jim Kerr.

USAN was formed by New York members of SAG and AFTRA who were dedicated to the merger and to “Uniting Screen Actors Nationwide. USAN now stands for Unity, Stability, and Advocacy for the New York local.

Two years ago, Drescher was elected president at the top of the L.A. local’s ruling Unite for Strength party, while Fisher was elected secretary-treasurer on the opposition party’s MembershipFirst ticket. But in an unprecedented show of solidarity, the two L.A. factions put aside their differences and joined forces in June — with Drescher and Fisher now on the same team — to form a unity slate in advance of the guild’s strike against film and TV productions, which is now in its 58th day.

The Drescher/Fisher unity slate also won all of the officer races, and all but one of the national board races, in Los Angeles.

This year’s elections leave the union more united than ever since its founding with the merger of SAG and AFTRA in March of 2012.

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