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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: December 2006

New Congressional leaders
have pro-animal history

 

WASHINGTON, DC.--Seldom if ever has a newly elected Congress looked more friendly toward animals.

To be inaugurated on January 3, 2007, the Democratic majorities elected in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on November 7, 2006 will take control of Congress from the largely unfriendly Republican majority who prevailed for the preceding 12 years, and will introduce into key positions some of the Senators and Representatives with the voting records most favorable to animals.

The Humane Society of the U.S. Legislative Fund publication Humane Scorecard gave perfect 100% scores during the 109th Congress to two of the five top-ranking members of the Democratic majority in the 110th Senate: Charles Schumer of New York, who will be vice chair of the Democratic caucus, and Patty Murray of Washington, who will be conference secretary. Steering Committee chair Debbie Stabenow of Michigan scored 80.

Humane Scorecard also gave perfect scores to six of the 19 committee chairs named to serve in the 110th House of Representatives. Among the six were Budget chair John Spratt of South Carolina; Education & Workforce chair George Miller of California; Govern-ment Reform chair Henry Waxman of California; International Relations chair Tom Lantos of California; Judiciary chair James Conyers of Michigan; and Rules chair Louise Slaughter of New York.

Miller, Waxman, and Lantos (who founded the Congressional Friends of Animals caucus in 1990, of which Miller and Waxman are longtime members) have been close political allies throughout the Congressional tenure of new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Californian. Humane Scorecard gave Pelosi only 56 in the 109th Congress, but she scored 100, 100, and 85 in the 106th, 107th, and 108th Congresses. The average Humane Scorecard rating for a House committee chair will rise from 33 in the 109th Congress to 69 in the 110th.

Congressional candidates endorsed by the National Rifle Association took an especially lopsided beating, the pro-gun control Brady Campaign reported.

"In the House, 109 NRA-backed candidates, either endorsed or 'A' rated, lost their races," a Brady press release summarized. Eighteen NRA-backed candidates lost in U.S. Senate.races.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle won re-election "even though the NRA spent nearly $300,000 and held their annual meeting in Milwaukee this year," Brady continued. Doyle twice vetoed NRA-backed legislation that "would allow virtually anyone to carry loaded, hidden handguns in public," according to Brady. Doyle also annoyed some hunters and birders in April 2005, after stating that he would veto any attempt by the state legislature to implement a proposal ratified by the statewide Wisconsin Conservation Congress caucuses to allow hunters to shoot feral cats.

"I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats," Doyle explained.
HSUS "counts 10 million Americans as members, an average of 23,000 in each of the 435 House districts. That's more than twice the membership of the National Rifle Association," observed Wall Street Journal correspondent Brody Mullins.

Several HSUS-endorsed Congressional candidates lost, notably Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who had introduced unsuccessful legislation in the 109th Congress to extend USDA oversight of dog breeders; Senator George Allen of Virginia, who introduced legislation to require that bittering agents be added to antifreeze to keep pets from ingesting it; and Representative John Sweeney of New York, who supported legislation to ban horse slaughter.

Santorum, Allen, and Sweeney, all Republicans, were each closely aligned with President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq.

HSUS was more successful in targeting authors of anti-animal legislation for defeat, including Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, whose November 2004 stealth rider to a budget bill in effect repealed the 1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse and Burro Protection Act.

"The political upheaval that made my day," Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson e-mailed, "is the defeat of Republican Richard Pombo of California," who had chaired the House Resources Committee, and became "the first committee chairman in the last five election cycles to lose a re-election bid," Watson observed. Pombo was toppled by wind energy consultant Jerry McNerney, who never before held public office.

Watson described Pombo as "a man who hated all things good for the environment, an animal hater and killer, a tree-destroyer, a war-monger and a dogfighter. A man who took it on himself to travel to Iceland to encourage the killing of whales, a man who wanted to fill Yellowstone with snowmobiles and sell off 15 other national parks to developers, a man who was working to dismantle the Endangered Species Act and promoting offshore oil rights and drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.

 

"When I was a Sierra Club director last year," Watson continued, "other directors and I urged the club to put as much pressure on Pombo as possible and to support any candidate opposing him."
The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife contributed heavily to ousting Pombo. "The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund targeted Pombo in the fall of 2005, when every pundit and political party thought he was unbeatable," exulted Defenders president Rodger Schlickeisen. "We were the first to place staff on the ground. Our staff and volunteers spoke with more than 75,000 households in Pombo's district about his awful record," while also helping to "defeat anti-wildlife candidates in 14 House races across the country."

HSUS president Wayne Pacelle personally knocked on doors in Dublin, California, to help beat Pombo. Pacelle had a close call when a pit bull terrier charged him at one house, in front of Brody Mullins.
"The dog slammed into the door. A screen was all that separated the growling beast" from Pacelle, wrote Mullins.

"I may be with the Humane Society, but I prefer little dogs when I'm canvassing," Pacelle said.

Female voters

Explained Brody, "HSUS first tested the waters in congressional elections in 2004 - and then, in just one race. In that campaign, the group campaigned against Representative Chris John in Louisiana, when the Democrat ran for an open Senate seat against Republican Representative David Vitter. Mr. John championed the state's legalized cockfighting industry.

"Polls showed that nine in 10 women in Louisiana opposed cockfighting," so HSUS spent $400,000 on radio ads and mailings to 300,000 women voters. John lost by 1% of the vote.

In November 2006, "Women's votes determined the outcome in virtually all the races involving seats that turned over," assessed Martha Burk, director of the Corporate Accountability Project sponsored by the National Council of Women. "Women's concerns will not only lead the way in the post-election debates about direction in the new Congress," Burk predicted, "but will decide who gets elected in the first place."

Female voters going to the polls primarily to oppose the war in Iraq also crushed Michigan Proposal 3, a referendum which would have legalized hunting mourning doves. Detroit Free Press polling found that Proposal 3 was opposed by 56% of the male voters, and 79% of the women, said Free Press staff writer Tina Lam.

"Until 2004, Michigan had banned hunting mourning doves for 99 years," summarized Lam. "That year, the legislature passed a bill allowing a dove hunting season in a limited area. The next year, dove enthusiasts and animal protection groups collected enough signatures to suspend dove hunting and put the measure on the statewide ballot."

The campaign pitted HSUS, the Michigan Humane Society, and the Michigan Audubon Society against Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the National Rifle Association, and the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance--and the hunters lost, in a state with one of the highest rates of hunting participation in the nation.

Iowa Federation of Humane Societies vice president Jerry Dominicak pointed out the result to Iowa legislators who have tried several times to repeal the longtime Iowa ban on dove hunting. Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack vetoed a repeal of the dove hunting ban that cleared the state legislature in 2001.

"With Vilsack leaving office, and a new administration coming in, it's more important than ever that Iowa lawmakers know where the people stand on hunting mourning doves," Dominicak said. Arizona voters approved Proposition 204, banning sow gestation crates and veal crates, by almost a two-to-one margin. Proposition 204 was backed by HSUS, the Arizona Humane Society, Animal Defense League of Arizona, and Farm Sanctuary.

Other propositions

"The Arizona Farm Bureau, Center for Consumer Freedom, and other groups pumped $2.5 million into a deceptive campaign to fool voters into thinking Proposition 204 was backed by 'extremist' groups," said HSUS spokesperson Leslie Porter, "but Arizona voters clearly rebuked" their "blatantly dishonest" approach.

However, Arizona voters also approved Proposition 207, requiring local governments to compensate private landowners for new regulations that restrict the use of their property. This, warned Arizona Daily Star reporter Tony Davis, "could take a big bite out of Pima County's plans to protect several imperiled species," including the Pima pineapple cactus, needle-spined pineapple cactus, and western burrowing owl.

"The news is not all we had hoped for," cautioned the Animal Protection Institute on November 8, "as voting-related measures in Colorado and Florida did not fare so well." Colorado Amendment 38, defeated, "would have expanded the ability of citizens to propose changes to state laws and local ordinances or resolutions by extending the petition process to all levels of Colorado's governments that use a legislative process, including school districts and counties." Florida Amendment 3 imposed a requirement that future amendments to the state constitution must receive at least 60% of the vote. "The practical effect will be to make it more difficult to enshrine animal protections within the state constitution," API explained. "However, once the protections are included in the constitution, Amendment 3 will make it more difficult for the opposition to undermine or delete them."

Hunters in particular have pushed for "supermajority" requirements for the passage of initiative legislation, as the numbers of licensed hunters have fallen to as little as 4% of the U.S. population, and pro-animal initiatives have increasingly often succeeded.

"Since 1990," Porter of HSUS recounted, "voters have enacted more than two dozen animal protection reforms through ballot initiatives, including banning cockfighting in Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma; outlawing horse slaughter and the sale of horse meat in California; restricting cruel and inhumane traps and poisons in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington; prohibiting inhumane bear hunting practices in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington; banning the use of gestation crates for breeding pigs in Florida; providing specialty spay/neuter license plates in Georgia; banning canned hunts and prohibiting future game farms in Montana; and outlawing aerial wolf killing in Alaska," twice approved by the electorate but twice undone by the legislature.

State-level success

Animal advocates enjoyed success at the state level as well as the national level.

The New York City-based League of Humane Voters endorsed winners not only in the federal Congressional race, but also in three New York State Senate races, and four state Assembly races. All eight candidates supported by the League attracted at least 60% of the ballots.

Almost all that animal use industries had to celebrate in the election returns was the defeat of Utah 3rd District Judge Leslie Lewis.

Explained Salt Lake Tribune reporter Lisa Rosetta, "Lewis came under fire from Gun Owners of Utah, as well as an anonymous group that posted a Web site, after she berated the brother of a man accused of poaching a deer. "

Lewis recused herself from trying the case of alleged trophy poacher Michael Jacobson on February 24, 2006, explaining that she had recently just missed being accidentally shot in the head by a hunter. "I cannot in all honesty tell you that I believe I could be fair. I have a prejudice concerning deer hunting and people who kill deer and transport deer who have been shot," Lewis said. "While Lewis' clerk searched for another judge to take the case, she began peppering Michael Jacobson with questions," wrote Rosetta. The questions pertained to why Michael Jacobson recreationally kills animals.

When his brother Kent Jacobson sighed loudly and left the courtroom, Lewis ordered a bailiff to bring him back, and asked "Why did you feel the need to make such an explosive and clear indication of your displeasure or boredom at being here?"

Responded Kent Jacobson, "It's not just the displeasure of being bored here. The problem is we have just as much rights as going out and shooting deer as you have the right ... " Lewis then lectured Kent Jacobson about who has the right to do what in a courtroom. After spending 20 minutes in handcuffs, Kent Jacobson was released without charges.

"We helped make some of Utah's deer hunters and gun owners aware of the fact that she was expressing extreme prejudice against a lawful activity that many of them engage in," Gun Owners of Utah spokesperson N.W. Clayton said.

Michael Jacobson, however, was convicted of wanton destruction of protected wildlife, a third-degree felony; was sentenced to 24 months on probation, during which time he is not allowed to hunt; and was ordered to pay $2,500 to an anti-poaching fund. --M.C.