HRC previously endorsed Susan Collins in every election since 2002, but says now that her support of Trump, McConnell and Kavanaugh is “simply untenable”

 

In yet another major blow to Senator Susan Collins’ reelection effort, The Human Rights Campaign, which had endorsed Collins in her last three campaigns, announced today their endorsement of Speaker Sara Gideon for U.S. Senate.

 

HRC President Alphonso David cited Senator Collins’ consistent support for Mitch McConnell’s agenda, her failure to hold Donald Trump accountable, and her key vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as reasons she lost the organization’s support. This announcement follows Kavanaugh’s anti-LGBTQ+ equality dissent in a recent Supreme Court case in which he argued that the decision to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from employment discrimination was a “mistake of history and sociology.”

 

HRC is far from the first major organization to pull their support of Collins in favor of backing Sara Gideon for Senate. Already, a number of Maine labor unions, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Everytown for Gun Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters have flipped to support Gideon.

 

The Washington Post: Major LGBTQ rights group breaks with Sen. Susan Collins, endorses Democratic opponent Sara Gideon

 

By Dave Weigel

July 15, 2020

 

Key Points:

 

  • The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy organization, is opposing Maine Sen. Susan Collins’s reelection bid and endorsing her Democratic opponent, Sara Gideon. It’s the first time that the HRC has opposed Collins, a key Republican vote on LGBTQ rights, for reelection.

 

  • The endorsement comes a day after Gideon, speaker of the state House, won Maine’s Democratic Senate primary.

 

  • “We are fighting for our lives and the only way to advance LGBTQ equality through the United States Senate is to install a new pro-equality majority leader and replace Mitch McConnell,” HRC President Alphonso David said in a statement. “Despite Susan Collins’ record of support on certain key LGBTQ issues, her support of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump’s agenda, endorsement of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court and failure to hold Donald Trump accountable, is simply untenable.”

 

  • That was before Collins’s vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The HRC condemned that vote, which Gideon cited as the reason she got into the race and which replaced frequently pro-LGBTQ Justice Anthony M. Kennedy with a social conservative. Last month, when a Supreme Court majority voted that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prevents LGBTQ employees from discrimination, Kavanaugh dissented.

 

  • Collins, elected in 1996, won reelection easily in 2002, 2008 and 2014. But polls since the Kavanaugh vote have found Democrats who had supported her for years souring on their moderate Republican senator. According to campaign filings from late last month, Gideon has raised $22.8 million, while Collins has raised $16.1 million. Gideon ended the primary with slightly more cash on hand, and opponents of Collins’s Kavanaugh vote had already raised $3.7 million in a separate fund, to be given to whoever won Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

 

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