HRC Back Story

Just days away from voters heading to the polls in Indiana and North Carolina for crucial Democratic presidential primaries, today HRC launched its nationwide "Year to Win" campaign to help elect fair-minded candidates to key offices around the country and released its first round of U.S. Senate endorsements for the 2008 general election.

HRC's Year to Win campaign builds on the success of its efforts in 2006, where we helped secure victory for 211 endorsed candidates, offering up a stinging defeat for some of the most anti-gay politicians in the country, including Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA).  HRC targeted 30 races in 18 states, raised $1.3 million in candidate contributions, placed 84 staffers in the field and spent more than $5 million in election-related activities. Over 90% of the candidates we endorsed won their elections and National Journal recognized the Human Rights Campaign as the #2 most effective interest group that year (the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) took the top slot).

Having already organized, educated and motivated the GLBT community during this year's primary season, HRC will again target resources toward fair-minded candidates on the federal and state level. Here is a small sampling of some of the efforts we'll be undertaking during Year to Win:

·         Launching Camp Equality™ to provide state-of-the-art campaign training for more than 1,500 participants in 13 cities across the country and to help deploy trainees to targeted campaigns;

·         Educating voters through the HRC Equality 2008 website, www.hrc.org/YearToWin, a new “one-stop shopping” election resource that will allow visitors to gauge the political landscape of each state, donate to candidates, access the latest news and information on GLBT issues on the trail, and view a report card on where the candidates stand on key issues in the race for the White House;

·         Mobilizing voters at more than 100 Pride events nationwide, expected to reach more than 5 million people;

·         Targeting 14 Senate races through on-the-ground organizing, GOTV efforts and fundraising to increase the fair-minded majority in the Senate;

The Human Rights Campaign's 2008 U.S. Senate endorsements as of April 28, 2008 can be found here.

We held a media conference call this morning (featuring Paul Begala) to introduce the Year to Win campaign and you can download the mp3 of the election conference call here.

We'll be releasing U.S. House endorsements at a later date, but in the meantime, you can read more about the Year to Win campaign, including reactions from some of HRC's endorsees in today's press release.