Maine Friends of Animals focuses its political impetus on state legislative races and seldom endorses national or local candidates.

However, given the outstanding record of Maine’s Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins, we have made an exception for this election.

Her list of bills supporting animal welfare is too long to list, but recently includes legislation in ending the slaughter of U.S. horses for human consumption, calling upon the government of Canada to end its commercial seal hunt, increasing funding for animal welfare, ending commercial whaling, increasing animal fighting enforcement, sponsoring downed animal protection, adding a bittering agent to anti-freeze to prevent pet and small animal poisoning, cosponsoring the pet safety act against Class B dealers of dogs and cats sold for research, and improving post-Katrina FEMA response to animals caught in a natural disaster.

Not only has our Maine Senator supported these and other animal protection bills, she is often a leading sponsor and active advocate. Senator Collins has repeatedly received an A on The Humane Society of the United States’s annual legislative scorecard.

Our endorsement means that we very much hope all our members and supporters will do whatever they can to help re-elect Senator Susan Collins so that she can go back to Congress for six more years to continue to do all that she does for animals.