The Human Rights Campaign has a history of backing its “Republican friends” over more LGBT-friendly Democrats. The most notable example is Susan Collins, who received their endorsement in 2008 over a House Democrat with a higher Human Rights Campaign legislative score and in 2014 over the former executive director of the Maine ACLU.
In an appalling, but unfortunately unsurprising move, the HRC endorsed Republican Mark Kirk for re-election in Illinois over Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth.
This seat is one widely viewed as one of the easiest ones for Democrats to win back—and one essential to any path to a majority. The HRC apparently does not care.
The HRC’s president said that they chose to endorse Kirk because he was the first Republican to support the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of groups constitutionally protected from discrimination. Tammy Duckworth is a co-sponsor of the parallel bill in the House.
In the last congressional session, Mark Kirk had a score of 78 in the HRC’s legislative scorecard, lower than the lowest-ranking Democrat. Tammy Duckworth had a perfect score.
But the HRC has consistently shown that a Democratic majority, which would be necessary to pass any of the bills it claims to support, is not a priority to them because it is not a priority of their wealthy donors nor part of their ineffective, self-defeating insider strategy.
A few months back, Bernie Sanders was criticized for referring to HRC as an “establishment” organization. Endorsements like this show how accurate his comments were.