Custom WP Plugin Admin Panel Insert To Custom Table – Not Working

Hello. I have written custom Plugin for WordPress 2.9.2.

I have created unique table in mySQL scheme called “leaders”.

I am able to read from the table with a widget I wrote and the following code:

global $wpdb;
$rows = $wpdb->get_results('SELECT leader_id, leader_title FROM leaders WHERE project_abbrev = '.$project_abbrev.' ORDER BY leader_order');

I am writing custom plugin that has Admin Panel with forms to insert the data into the table (to then be read by the widget).

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the INSERT statement in my plugin is NOT WORKING. Everything executes with NO PHP errors/warning, but no records show up in the mySQL table ‘leaders’.

Here is my code for INSERTing to table ‘leaders’ in Plugin:

global $wpdb;

$project_abbrev 	= $_POST[ 'project_abbrev' ];
$leader_title 		= $_POST[ 'leader_title' ];
$leader_price 		= $_POST[ 'leader_price' ];
$leader_desc 		= $_POST[ 'leader_desc' ];
$leader_order 		= $_POST[ 'leader_order' ];

$result = $wpdb->query( $wpdb->prepare("INSERT INTO $wpdb->leaders ( project_abbbrev, leader_title, leader_price, leader_desc, leader_order ) VALUES ( %s, %s, %s, %s, %d )", 'Test Abbrev','Test Title','$39,900','THIS IS DESC',2) );

I have also tried the following INSERT statements… all using $wpdb for the INSERTs:

$wpdb->insert( 'leaders', array(
	'project_abbbrev' => $project_abbrev,
	'leader_title' => $leader_title,
	'leader_price' => $leader_price,
	'leader_desc' => $leader_desc,
	'leader_order' => $leader_order ),
	array( '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%d' ) );

$wpdb->query( $wpdb->prepare( "
	INSERT INTO $wpdb->leaders
	( project_abbbrev, leader_title, leader_price, leader_desc, order )
	VALUES ( %s, %s, %s, %s, %d )",
	array('Test Abbrev','Test Title','$39,900','THIS IS DESC',2) ) );

Anyone got some ideas/suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Been searching these forums and elsewhere without finding anything.

-JFK-