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May 04, 2008

140K strong Humane Society endorses Merkley!

(previously posted at Blue Oregon)

The Humane Society endorsed Jeff Merkley today. He's their only endorsement in Oregon and they only made two other Primary Election endorsements this year - Kucinich in Ohio and Lautenberg in New Jersey.

Now this is an endorsement which intrigues me. Mostly because either I've never noticed their endorsements before or I just never thought of The Humane Society as the endorsing kind of organization. Either way, this one came out of the blue for me.

Perhaps this explanation from their website is why:

HSLF is a nonpartisan organization that evaluates candidates based only on a single criterion: where they stand on animal welfare. HSLF does not judge candidates based on party affiliation or any other issue.

But it turns out that the HSLF does endorse General Election candidates in most states. In 2006 they endorsed (by my count) 447 candidates in 45 states, including our own Representatives Wu, Blumenauer, DeFazio and Hooley - all of whom won their respective races. This too is interesting to me because in the FAQ section of the HSLF's website they note that a candidate's "chances for winning the seat" is part of the endorsement criteria. Which, frankly, understates the HSLF's emphasis on endorsing winning candidates.

Doing a bit of rudimentary math - 447 endorsees, 44 of whom lost - yields a winning ratio for the 2006 HSLF endorsee slate of over 90%.

I don't know of any other endorsing entity which boasts that high of a win ratio for endorsees, do you?

In the comment thread at Blue Oregon it was pointed out that there are two "Humane Society" entities in the United States. One is the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and the other is The American Humane Society (AHS). HSUS is the parent organization of the HSLF which endorsed Merkley.

According to Wikipedia, HSUS is the larger of the two with 10 million members nationwide and 140K members here in Oregon. Which I believe makes the HSLF the single biggest endorsing entity in this race.

Posted by Kevin at May 4, 2008 12:05 PM